Ivaylo
by screening
Summary: [SYOT.][SEQUEL TO JACQUERIE.] One Victor, but seven survivors. One President, but four pretenders to the throne. One Panem, but a nation divided. The past and present combine as the 77th Hunger Games begin, and as a new threat ascends Panem is dragged once again into war.
1. Cartographer of Steel

_Ah! well a-day! what evil looks_  
 _Had I from old and young!_  
 _Instead of the cross, the Albatross_  
 _About my neck was hung._

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

* * *

The floor beneath him was granite and angular. White and black panes of stone were arranged in mosaic to form an eagle carrying arrows, scrabbling across the floor in shards of obsidian and marble.

Caesar Flickerman neatly placed his steps over the top of the eagle, ignoring his inbuilt urge to tread around Panem's greatest sigil of power.

Above and around him, shadowed by balconies and lit in areas by small windows, the rest of the hall was built with stone and clad in mahogany and obsidian- every furnishing was either black or deep brown. Rustling in the evening sunlight were huge red banners, draped from every balcony, with the black sigil of Panem at the top and the white of President Snow's administrative sigil on the bottom- the eternal dove, carrying a rose in its beak and a blade in its talons. Caesar lifted his hand and drew it past the silk, relishing in the feel of decadence. It wasn't like he didn't own the fabric; he had spent a lifetime surrounded by silk. But touching President Snow's belongings satiated some part of his psyche, especially when he wasn't sure how long he would be alive to interfere in the President's world much longer.

An armed escort to his left made a frustrated sound and Caesar quickly retracted his hand from the banner.

"Sorry," he said with his trademark toothy smile. None of the gun-carrying guards lifted even a hint of a smile underneath their half-visors.

The escorts, four of them, were all from the Capitol Guard. When they had arrived at Caesar's apartment at the Waterfront, he was certain he was to be taken to the Re-Education Center; he had almost considered running. But instead of being black-bagged and knocked out, Caesar was half-pushed into a lavish limousine and then driven straight to the Presidential Mansion. No question would loose an answer; Caesar, master of words, had been faced with an impenetrable wall of silence.

 _So_ , he had thought when even his most winning smile and cajoling tone failed to raise even a glance from the Guard, _it's not re-education; it's execution._

Only a few hours ago, Caesar Flickerman had watched as the cameras of the Arena cut out; even to those with the administrative privileges of a Level 7 staff member like himself. For an hour there was only speculation and reruns; Caesar had been smartly informed by phone that his services were not required in the recording booth, despite his desperation to spin the radio silence into something with more potential. And then, an hour later-

Well.

The feed had cut back. There was no audio, but there was image. It was of seven tributes in a strange room, banks of computers surrounding them. A camera, seemingly positioned in the corner of an elevator and remotely controlled, followed the grainy image of a tribute as he tapped furiously on a keyboard, looking back expectantly to the elevator as if someone was in it. Then, one pushed at the ceiling; light flooded the camera feed, and by the time the exposure had re-adjusted, the tributes were gone from the room.

Abruptly, the Capitol TV feed had cut to black, then to a test card; Caesar had started furiously making calls about who was broadcasting the footage, but none of his sources could tell him.

Caesar was on the verge of leaving his house and breaking into the recording studio, but then- Then. The feed cut back again.

Bits and pieces of footage, ruined by static and interspersed with cutting to a test card here and there. It was timestamped for only an hour ago; timestamped for an hour ago, exactly. Cesal and Emil, clearly bloodstained despite the black and white footage, crashed through the ceiling of the footage and down, rolling away as almost-undiscernable bullets chewed up the floor. A test card for Capitol TV, a long monotone for twenty minutes, and then-

Caesar had stopped pacing and yelling down a phone in favour of sitting on the edge of his huge couch in a mix of anticipation and horror.

The now-familiar strange room was empty, but bullets had rent the floor and blood stained the ground. The square of light coming from the ceiling was suddenly obliterated by shadow.

And then the camera started moving, the room moving in the other direction, but both diagonally moving downwards. Steel beams crashed around the camera, and then it plunged downwards, down past one floor, then another, then so many so quickly they became a blur, and then there was debris everywhere in the field of the camera, light and shadow and then overwhelming light, light like a fire, and then-

The feed cut out again, and this time Caesar was in no question of what had happened.

The arena had been destroyed.

None of his sources in the arena would take his calls; after an hour or so, he gave up. His in-Capitol sources could tell him nothing. Eventually, Caesar gave up, had his Avox mix him cocktails with significantly more alcohol in them than usual, and waited for the Capitol Guard.

And now he was in the Presidential mansion, flanked by four guards. He expected to be taken to the main Reception Hall, but instead the guards took a left at the end of the huge lobby and down to a lavish but far more secure area of the mansion; one that Caesar, after a lifetime of living in the Capitol, had never known about.

Right, right, left and down to the end of the corridor. One of the Guard knocked on the huge doors.

"Come in," a faint but eminently familiar voice said. Caesar swallowed involuntarily. The Guard opened the doors, waited as he crossed the threshold, then closed the doors behind him.

Caesar stood in a hall; it was, perhaps, larger than the lobby, and perhaps larger than even the Reception Hall. The walls were clad in flawless white marble, but there were no windows. Spotlights illuminated objects on plinths and in display cases, but everything else was in shadow. The objects ranged in size and type; by Caesar's hand in a display case lay a scorched, larger-than-life marble head, of a long-faced, austere man wearing a top hat that Caesar did not recognise. In one corner of the room, lights illuminated an old and partially destroyed helicopter on a plinth; huge hand-painted numbers on the side, smeared and scorched along with the rest of the helicopter, read '13'.

"Admiring the Hall of Antiquities?" A voice resonated through the room. Caesar forced himself to turn slowly as he tried to source the voice in the shadows- President Snow walked from behind a plinth, gloved hands holding a tatty book he flicked through as he spoke.

"I thought this was just a rumour," Caesar replied. He winced slightly. "I actively dismissed those rumours as faulty information."

"Certain information is kept from the public," Snow responded, "For their own good. Take this." He held up the book. "An ancient text from the First Age, before Panem; it was written as dogma for radicals, by a man named Saul Alinsky. Have you heard of it?"

"-No."

"That is because I decreed it was not for public view. In the hands of the wrong people, this text could help incite rebellion."

"Even without it," Caesar said carefully, "Rebellion may be incited regardless."

Snow regarded Caesar a moment; for a second, Caesar worried he had stepped too far in trying to normalise his presence to Snow, but the President started to smile carefully. Caesar wasn't sure yet if that was better than having the President frowning.

"You didn't ask the obvious question, I note."

"I didn't wish to undermine your premise of authority, sir."

"On television, I respect and encourage that. In private, I would encourage you to ask the question you are thinking."

Caesar stepped forward neatly, fingers brushing over the glass of a display case. "If for the good of the public you restrict rebel dogma; why does it remain here?"

"Because it remains useful to those maintaining peace." Snow turned a page of the centuries-old book. "Rule one- power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have. Something you have ensured for me over many years as the Games' figurehead."

"A role, I hope, you believe I have fulfilled?"

Snow closed the book and placed it back in its display cabinet; glass closed over it automatically the second his hand retracted. "Ah. And now you so carefully bring us to the _real_ question on your tongue."

 _Shit_. He had gone too far into his habits as an interviewer, and Snow was no naive tribute. "-My apologies, sir, my intent was not to push-"

"It was entirely your intent, Flickerman. I had wondered how long it would take before you pushed for the answer; if you're wondering, I had expected you to be far more your persona."

"With respect, sir," Caesar said, brushing back a stray hair from his wig, "I am not my persona."

"No," Snow said with an interested tone. "You are not." He stepped forward again, this time absently admiring the display case in the center of the room. It was small, and the scorched, rectangular device upon it was tiny, but it had been given the central position in the room, clearly elevated above the rest. "Why do you think you are here, Caesar?"

 _What was this, Twenty Questions?_ Caesar formulated an innocent answer as quickly as possible. "The events on television seemed- _unusual,_ so I trust that you want me to soothe the public about their nature."

"It would not be a poor assumption. What you're really wondering, however, is whether or not you're here to be punished."

Caesar's blood ran cold. Speaking to the President was always done between the two of them in riddles; the truth could not be touched upon so inelegantly. This was unusual. This was terrifying.

"-I, ah, did not want to sound so-"

"Caesar." Snow cut him off as he stepped to stand only a display case away. "You aren't here to be punished, so stop stumbling over your words. You are standing in one of the most high-security, need-to-know basis vaults in the country- you think I would place a _television presenter_ in here just to execute them?"

"No, sir."

"Your reason for being here is this- Head Gamemaker Seneca Crane, Games Head of Technology Lexus Valerian, Games Communications Director Josiah Lyman and the majority of the arena staff are dead."

Caesar blinked. "-I'm sorry, sir?"

"To the public, you will report their deaths as a terrible and tragic accident, made by Crane and Valerian's negligence." Snow regarded Caesar carefully. "In private, I want you to know they died by Presidential order to the Capitol Guard."

This couldn't be right. Caesar had been certain that the arena had been destroyed on the television, and none of the staff had returned his calls, but-

"-Every person in the arena? All of them?" Caesar couldn't help the nervous laugh that punctuated his voice. "Didn't anyone try to run?"

"Lyman headed an evacuation of the majority of the staff. They were apprehended at the border and executed before they could reach Panem."

Caesar didn't understand. Hundreds of people dead, the President was telling him about it, and he still didn't know why he was here.

"You understand, I am certain, that the tributes had formed a revo alliance."

"-Yes, sir?"

"The rest of the staff were, if not complicit, actively permitting rebellion and running from the Capitol. They were enemies of the state. You understand this? I know many of the staff were in the entertainment industry such as yourself." Snow's voice betrayed no emotion in killing hundreds. Thankfully, Caesar's voice didn't either; the alcohol he had drunk in the past few hours had significantly calmed his nerves on that front.

"They were enemies of the state. I understand, sir. You said the- _majority_ of the staff?"

"Yes. Plutarch Heavensbee returned early this morning, far prior to the raid, with a broken nose. According to him, he ran into a door." The President seemed unconvinced; Caesar was entirely unconvinced. For Plutarch to have escaped the massacre was suspicious to say the least. Snow gave a vague snort. "And, I'd suspect, he's about to try and run _you_ into a door."

"...Sir?"

"You have served me well as Master of Ceremonies, Caesar, and I reward those that serve me well. Effective immediately, I, Coriolanus Snow, President of Panem, appoint you, Caesar Flickerman, as the Head Gamemaker of the Hunger Games."

Caesar's head lifted slightly in shock. This was not punishment. This was _promotion._

"Now. Six of the revo tributes died in the explosion- but we recovered one alive. Seneca and Lexus put out the delayed footage of the arena's destruction before we could stop them. I want to put this entire incident behind us, and behind the Capitol, as quickly as possible. What would you advise?"

 _Oh, this was just perfect_. Caesar had thought that in order to undermine the President, he would have to push the public to revolt from his seat on television; but now, the President in his paranoia of Heavensbee had handed him the keys to the kingdom. He could destroy Snow's seat on power from the inside. He smiled, straightening.

It was time to begin.

"Well, sir, first of all- I would advise that we crown our Victor."

* * *

 _Hello, all, and welcome to Ivaylo._

 _This SYOT is the direct sequel to my previous SYOT, Jacquerie; they are an AU in which the 74th and 75th Games pass without incident, and in the 76th seven unlikely tributes form an alliance to escape. This is about to be the 77th._

 _If you clicked on this with the interest of the 'Open SYOT' label, this is indeed open. However, previous characters will be returning in chapters, and will be driving the plot while I intertwine characters into the mix. This is not a typically formulated SYOT, and as such the characters I am looking for are different. I am not looking for twenty four tributes- I am looking for three tributes, two Capitolians, and an Avox. Each character has a starting line of what is required of them; full details can be found on my profile. You can submit for as many of the six as you like, but this is not first-come first-served; I will be choosing based on character-building merit and how well they fit the plotline. The submission deadline is the 13th of June._

 _Now, Jacquerie updated daily, but I'm not certain that I can continue this with Ivaylo; as such, I will be updating twice-weekly on Mondays and Fridays._

 _Thank you for reading this far, and I am overjoyed to welcome you all to Ivaylo._

 _May the odds be ever in your favour._


	2. Victory

_WIth thanks to Katrace, JadeRavenstone and Technicolor Raincoat for your reviews of the last chapter._

* * *

 **Y184-09-05 T 10:54:00**

 **THE CAPITOL**

* * *

His head was swimming through a haze, asleep and awake at once- he was aware of the sounds around him, but could not dwell on them.

They were strange sounds, he mused- sounds like "morphling", or "blood"; or "scalpel". If he had been awake enough to dwell on them, he might have tried to get up- but his mind was hazy, and his limbs were heavy, and he was warm and tired where he lay.

His eyes fluttered as a strange sensation emanated from his leg. He did not have the ability to think about it, and sleep took him.

* * *

The next time he woke, he was still hazy, but with enough semblance of mind to slowly and excruciatingly wake up. He took stock of what he could- that he was lying down. That through his blurry vision, he could see bright lights, white walls, and not much else.

He could see that this was not the arena, nor was it the forest outside of it.

He was alive, but he was not where he should be.

He wriggled, then, trying to sit up; but a dull ache in his leg, near his ankle, reached a crescendo of pain- he moaned, dropping back to the bed. He opened his eyes properly now; the pain had pushed the drowsiness almost entirely from his head, and it was specific and overwhelming enough to demand his attention.

He had been shot. By the hovercraft. In his side, and arm. He knew this. He remembered it now. He sat up slowly, this time careful of moving his legs. He pulled at the thin cotton sheet he lay under and inspected his arm; he pulled at the strange white gown he was wearing to check his side. He knew the bullets had hit him there, but he found nothing; his skin was smooth, almost perfect, as if nothing had happened at all. He looked closer- tiny, pale scars littered the skin, but almost imperceptibly. Each bullet hole was closed with incredible precision, healed past normal healing.

And yet, despite having taken stock of all injuries he was aware of having recieved, his left leg still ached, just above the ankle. He leant forward, wincing as the motion forced his leg into the mattress more, and pulled the cotton sheets free from his body.

The strange, crinkly white gown he was wearing only reached to knee level So it was abundantly clear for him to see that just above the ankle of his lower leg, was now where his left leg stopped.

He blinked. He couldn't feel his heart beating- was his heart beating? He didn't know. He took shallower breaths, shallower; and then the panic took him. He tried to get up, to stand up, but he stopped just short of standing and sat back on the bed in horror, because he _didn't know how to stand_. His left leg ended in a stump and he didn't understand, he didn't understand, _he couldn't_ -

He hadn't even noticed the heart rate monitor he was connected to until it started to beep rapidly, and he looked to it in horror as it betrayed his fast-beating heart. Violently, he ripped away the pads connecting him to the machine, breathing shallowly and carding his fingers through his hair as he looked at his leg, except it couldn't be _his_ leg, it couldn't be, it _couldn't_ -

The door to the all-white room opened. A woman in white entered; her smile was kind but her eyes were not.

"Mr Barkwater, please calm down," she said with an artificial smile, approaching him. Quint looked up at her. Her eyes were a cool blue, but it was an artificial blue- her irises were too round, the colour too uniform. Her hair was short, but spiked in precise cones, in a similar shade.

 _Capitol_ , Quint's mind supplied, and he wheeled back on the bed, trying to back away, but he couldn't move, not like this, _what was happening-_

"Mr Barkwater," she sighed, her smile dropping to match her cold, false blue eyes, "Either calm down or I send in security with more morphling."

That stopped him cold. The word 'morphling' had always given him nothing less than an expression of fear; watching his District's people destroy themselves over where the next dose was coming from was so damning to him that even his fear of this Capitolian could not tempt that fate.

"Very good." The Capitolian in the white clothing crossed to stand in front of him. "Mr Barkwater, I am your chief medical supervisor here at the hospital. You were shot in several places, including the arm, side, and leg. Tragically, while we could patch up your arm and side, your left leg beneath and including the ankle was unsalvageable; we were forced to carry out a disarticulation of the limb." She was speaking slowly and with exaggerated expression, as if speaking to a small child. "Do you understand what I am trying to say?"

All but one part. "I wasn't shot in the leg," he murmured. "I wasn't shot in the leg." He wanted to repeat it, over and over; wanted to scream it in the Capitolian's face until she _understood_ , but he had the horrible feeling she already knew.

The artificial smile was back and a deep pit of fear opened in Quint's heart. "Oh, you must have passed out before it happened. It _was_ a horrible trauma you've been through; but I suppose it had a silver lining, after all!"

Quint frowned. "What?"

She smiled her artificial smile. "The arena was destroyed; but you, and you alone, survived. Congratulations, Quint- you are the Victor of the Seventy-sixth Hunger Games."

She left, then; perhaps she said more, but it did not register in his mind. It did not matter.

The arena was destroyed. The Capitol was sent in to do that in the first place. Then why was he here? Why did they let him live? They must know he was a rebel; then why did they save him? And brand him a Victor?

And what had happened to his _leg_?

He sat on the edge of the bed, alternating between taking in his surroundings and inspecting his leg; what was left of it, anyway. It was neatly severed just above the ankle, with a healing scar in a raised cross where his skin had been pulled apart and closed together again. The pain was lessening now that he had the semblance of mind to push it down; but the strange feeling of _lacking_ was starting to overcome that. Quint knew the rest of his leg should be there, but it wasn't; he felt as if he should be able to rotate his foot, but he couldn't.

Tentatively, slowly, he placed his right foot on the floor and held onto the bars of his bed as he pushed himself into a semi-standing position. Instinctually he tried to place down his left leg, too, but it hovered above the floor, not hitting the ground, and Quint bit his lip, pushing down the urge to cry.

He had larger problems right now than his leg. He had to figure out where he was- he had to _focus_.

He turned in place, half hopping and half limping around the bars of the bed, looking out of the huge floor-to-ceiling window on the other side of the room. Unable to bear the strange sensation of standing and _not_ , Quint lowered himself to the ground, leaning against the large, curved window, trying to collect himself.

What was left, anyway.

Beneath him, frustratingly familar, lay the streets of the Capitol. And yet, it wasn't the silent, abandoned Capitol he had become used to; he was back in the real Capitol, and the streets below him, perhaps four floors below, buzzed with a vibrance that almost threatened to overwhelm. Shining people in shining clothes flitted to and fro on the streets; above them, monorails that had been absent in the fake Capitol shuttled residents to and fro in carriages. Without and with people, the Capitol was transformed.

Without, it had been austere and shining, a beacon of brilliance and size, overwhelming to be alone within. With people, it had shrunk; the scale of inhabitants had made the dizzying heights of the buildings next to the streets seem not as unusual. The constant movement, instead, provided the dizzying effect; tackier than the austere depths of the huge buildings, perhaps, but with more life, more passion.

Quint watched the people shimmer in the late summer sunlight, and thought.

So he had faced off against the hovercraft, to save Emil and Cesal; a stupid idea, perhaps, but one he had been firm upon. They had shot at his right arm, his right side; and yet they had amputated his left leg, above the ankle.

He had been a rebel, and yet here he stood, the apparent Victor of the Hunger Games- when the last person to have truly played the game had died by the teeth of a hundred mutts.

He was a rebel and he still lived. They had shot him, saved his life, and yet amputated a leg he was sure they had not shot.

And if everyone was dead-

 _They were not dead_. Quint would not permit himself to think about it. The Capitol lied, he knew that; the Capitol always lied.

And yet- and yet. What reason would there be to lie? What reason would there be to let any of them live? To save Elizabeth? To save Glace? Theon? Any of them?

Quint closed his eyes against the feeling of tears. He was back amongst people, but he had never felt so alone.

* * *

They came for him, eventually; he had almost thought they had forgotten him, and had liked the idea of it. Four members of the Capitol Guard arrived- he was told to walk with them. As he struggled to stand, one sighed heavily and had a quick conversation with a hospital official, who supplied some crutches. Quint, feeling weak and vulnerable and hating it, limped down the hallway with four guns surrounding him, was escorted into a small room within the hospital, and told to wait.

Eventually, the door opened and a woman walked in, escorted by a Capitol Guard- she sighed as she looked Quint over, gestured for her escort to wait outside, and closed the door behind her.

"It's Quint, right?" She said, shrugging her backpack from her shoulder and placing it next to a slim suitcase she had also wheeled into the room.

He said nothing.

"It's cool, I'll go first," she said eventually. "I'm Salvia Kim, and I'm going to take over as your chief medical supervisor until your discharge from the hospital. I understand you suffered extreme trauma to your left leg and had a disarticulation of the limb." She looked over at Quint, her eyes drawn to the amputated limb as were his own. "I'm so sorry it happened."

Quint couldn't help but repeat himself, dismally and weakly. "I wasn't shot there," he said, surprised at just how weak his voice sounded; his emotions so rarely clouded his own judgement, but here he could not shake the feeling of melancholy that had swamped him.

She blinked. She glanced to the door.

"So I'm Doctor Salvia Kim," She repeated. "I've been assigned to your case due to your disarticulation; I happen to be the Chief Medical Officer within the Technological Innovation Committee."

Quint, for the first time, looked up properly into the doctor's eyes. She looked afraid but firm.

"Like Lexus Valerian," he murmured. "Right?"

Salvia nodded. "I am- was- good friends with him. I mean-" she glanced around her, as if afraid of being watched. It wouldn't surprised them if they were being watched. "-His ineptitude caused hundreds of deaths and he is to not to be remembered favourably for this, but he was."

Quint blinked. "His ineptitude?"

Salvia Kim looked at him searchingly. She lifted her suitcase onto a table and began unclasping it. "He and Seneca Crane; our former Head of the Committee, the same as Lexus; they have been named as those most responsible for the accident at the arena."

"The _accident_?" _Was that what they were calling it? How could you call such a thing an accident? Didn't the Capitol see what happened?_

She frowned. "Has nobody told you anything?"

"Only that everyone was- dead." The words took considerable effort to form.

"They told us the arena's weapons systems suffered a catastrophic fault. The hundreds of staff beneath the arena all perished, along with the tributes. Except for you." She looked up from the suitcase, staring into his eyes for a long time. "That's what they told us." She was almost daring him to tell her otherwise.

"I see." Quint did not know what to say. There was something in that that was grating against his hazy memory; something that didn't ring properly true. But what could he tell her? He wasn't sure how many ears were listening. He wasn't even sure if she was truly a friend of Lexus and Seneca; she could be an agent proper of the Capitol, testing his loyalty, testing his ability to lie.

"Lexus was my friend," she said, her voice shaking. "Seneca too." She took a deep breath. "My sister- Vesta- she was working on-site as a chief weapons officer. They've all been named inept, and to be posthumously expunged from the record for their negligence."

What did she want from him? He had lost people too. He didn't know what was right and what was wrong.

Until something occurred to him. Something terrible.

Lexus and Seneca had said they had evacuated the arena so they could be the scapegoat. But if Salvia's sister had died too- then either Lexus and Seneca had lied, or the Capitol had killed its own citizens, _hundreds_ of them, to protect the truth.

Quint's mouth was dry. With eyes potentially everywhere, could he say that to this shaking, grief-stricken doctor? Could he say anything at all?

"I'm sorry," was all he said, and looked down at the ground. Salvia took a deep breath.

"No, it's not your fault," she said weakly, smiling. "Not very professional of me. Okay, so- the reason they called me in is because my job, as ever, is getting Victors back on their feet before we put you in front of any cameras. Now, sometimes people refuse our help- I'm sure you know Chaff."

A Victor from District Eleven, who had only the wrist of his right hand remaining. Quint remembered him.

"But I would really recommend you take our help, because it's going to make things a lot easier for you. Besides- you'll look better on camera, and people like that."

Quint disliked the feeling of taking help- he still remembered being given golden coins by a Capitolian, prior to the Games. But he was vulnerable, and in pain, and could barely stand.

"Anything you can do, I'll have." The words were difficult to say but he said them anyway, holding her gaze.

Salvia smiled. "That's what I hoped to hear." She stepped forward, gently wrapping a tape measure around what was left of the bottom of his left leg. "Okay, that's smaller than I expected, but thankfully I brought a load of sizes."

"What are you going to do?" He asked. She hummed to herself vaguely, fishing through her suitcase- it was opened so from his angle he couldn't see the inside.

"The Innovation Committee has always been devoted to developing neural-technological relays; Lexus Valerian was especially a proponent of it, but didn't realise its medical applications until I came forward." She lifted a strange metal device from the suitcase; the bottom of the device was a single, curved, flat blade of metal. "Electroactive polymers, connected to a myoelectric prosthesis. We're still working on the osseointegration, but for now it's just suction- connecting directly to the bone holds too much chance of the bone breaking under stress."

Quint was a mechanic by trade, but he had been left behind after she had said the word 'electroactive'. She looked up, seeming to sense his confusion.

"It's a prosthesis, in short- an advanced one, but the concept is the same as any other."

"And you're- giving me that?"

"No, not today. We measured you up for it and constructed it while you were unconscious, but we don't have calibration with your muscle response yet; today, we calibrate this up and give you an interim prosthesis, and tomorrow morning we'll have mapped the bionic in preparation for your big TV interview."

Quint had stopped listening after 'while you were unconscious'.

"How long have I been out?" He murmured, scared of the response. She looked at him with a strangely sad expression.

"Three days," she said softly. "How much did they even tell you?"

"That I was shot in the leg. That everyone died. That I was the Victor." He looked at the tiles of the floor pensively. Those three facts, swirling in his head. He only had what he could see as evidence for any of those facts- and what he could see was the grief of the Capitolian in front of him, and the awful, aching /loss that was the base of his left leg.

Everyone could be dead. Everyone was dead. The Capitol lied. The Capitol was grieving. The lines were starting to blur.

"Okay," Salvia said, forcing a smile. "Okay, let's, ah- let's look on the bright side!" Her voice had taken on a far more sugary tone, one he recognised as the artificial tone of the Capitol escorts- apparently, it was a universal quality the Capitol's residents could call upon in their voice. "You survived, and you're the Victor, and that's going to be great for you! First and foremost, let's calibrate up your leg, and then I'll give you an interim prosthesis, just for today. Okay, if I connect this up, then you start flexing your leg as if you were moving your foot up and down-"

* * *

Quint had spent several hours in the small medical room; it could have been an hour, but Salvia Kim had patiently and literally walked Quint through his first tentative steps on a temporary prosthesis. It didn't have bionic properties, just a few artificial joints; it was painful to step onto a still-healing scar, and it was an uncomfortable reminder that his leg had been severed just above the ankle. Still, he didn't complain about the excessive time Salvia gave him to learn to somewhat walk on the prosthesis- he did not relish the concept of leaving the medical room, and the doctor that seemed, unlike the majority of the Capitol, a nice person. He wasn't sure if it was related to her wish for information regarding her family, but he couldn't tell her anything- he wouldn't. He had been certain all of the staff had been evacuated; if her sister was dead, either Seneca lied or the Capitol executed her, and he had an unfortunate hunch which it was.

But he valued his life above her desperation, as much as it pained him to admit. So he left without saying a word, despite Salvia's hopeful and semi-desperate glances in his direction.

Crutches abandoned for a plastic and metal prosthesis, Quint limped down the hospital corridors with his armed escorts in tow. Salvia had told him that he would find it easier to walk with them in the early days, but he was nothing if not proud, especially in the presence of the Capitol, and he walked despite the pain and uncomfortable feeling of _wrong_ that walking on a prosthesis elicited. However, despite the hours of practice balancing on a false limb was still nigh-impossible; Quint was relying on the cane Salvia had given to him as much, if not more, than his leg.

He found his hospital room emptied of the devices that had been hooked up to him; the bed had been cleared of everything but a simple white sheet and a small pile of clothes. Quint dressed quickly and with consideration towards the ever-watching camera in the corner of the room; he glowered down at the two socks and shoes he had been provided, flinging one of the shoes idly at the wall as he dressed.

The escorts returned and by now he knew the drill- he walked with them slowly, limping and leaning on his slim metallic cane, through the hospital and out to a walled courtyard, into a shuttle on a monorail with glossy black paint and shimmering tinted windows.

From within the shuttle, the Capitol could not see him but he could see the Capitol; and now as he watched it from just above ground level, he noticed something profoundly odd about the multitudes of people moving through the streets. His experience of Capitolian dress had taught him that they were colourful and eccentric; their outfits were flamboyant and avant-garde to a degree that was almost obscene, and they moved as so many shimmering moths in the night.

But here, in the late afternoon of the Capitol streets he passed, the people were almost uniformly dressed in black. Their surgically enhanced and makeup-encrusted features were contorted in grief-stricken sadness. The gambling emporiums, with their glittering glass interiors, were nigh-silent; the bars, from what he could see of them, were full of people, but they were not there for the social activities the Capitol so prized. The few Capitolians stumbling from the windowless interiors of the bars were thoroughly drunk and miserable; the cool, collected and false emotions of the Capitol's usual mob had dropped, to something Quint almost recognised- something almost human.

The Capitol were mourning a tragedy they had never faced the likes of before. Of a hundred thousand citizens, all of whom spent their lifetime making social connections and nothing else, at least several hundred had died suddenly and tragically. And, it seemed- if Quint was right- at the hands of President Snow himself.

 _What could have happened in three days?_ Quint thought in horror as the mourning Capitol changed beneath him.

* * *

The Reception Hall, as it was apparently called, was opulent and beautiful.

However, Quint had liked it better when it had been on fire with the rest of Snow's mansion.

"How long are we gonna wait?" He asked, keeping his voice rough and abrasive so as to hide his nerves. An aide in pure white clothing tutted at him vaguely.

"As long as the President chooses, Mr Barkwater."

"Is this a normal Victor thing?" The word 'Victor' tasted sour in his mouth when he remembered six others standing with him, but he needed to know what was happening.

"No," a sonorous voice said from behind him. Quint twisted around in his hard wooden chair to see the President walking in from another room. "No, Mr Barkwater, it is not normal."

Quint stared in a mix of anxiety and anger as the President slowly halted next to Quint, observing him carefully.

"When the President stands in a room, Mr Barkwater, nobody may sit."

Quint had to fight to keep the wince from his face as he forced himself upwards to half-lean on his cane and half-lean on his recently amputated leg, forced painfully against the plastic and metal prosthesis. Snow was observing his face with a horrifyingly sadistic smile, and that alone was all that fuelled Quint's determination to keep his expression still.

"Very well." Snow crossed to sit behind the desk, and it was all Quint could do not to gasp with relief as he took the weight from the lacerated bone and scar tissue that constituted the bottom of his left leg. "Mr Barkwater, there will no doubt be questions about the past three days. Questions you have, questions I have." He sat back. "But they are irrelevant."

They were _not_. None of his fellow tributes had been _irrelevant_. Not even the staff were _irrelevant_. Quint knew that hovercraft had been sent in to kill them and for all he knew they were all dead and that was not _irrelevant_. He was about to intervene when Snow cut in first.

"I want to turn to history. Ancient history, in fact. Thousands and thousands of years ago. That's not taught in your District schools, now is it? It's not even taught in our schools here."

Quint didn't care about ancient history, he cared about _now_. He seethed as the President picked up a shining, sharp letter opener and began twirling it, the point poised tantalisingly against the pad of his finger.

"My predecessor President Sanchez told me once of a great land, its history now sadly lost to us. Its name was China; it held a dynasty that lasted many thousand years. And it was so powerful because it was so simple; so clever; so brutalist. There were five punishments dealt in ancient China. Five only. One for murder, one for theft; and so on, as you can imagine. But there was a punishment in the five set aside for treason. And for treason, death was not enough. Death was too kind. For treason- to have /rebelled against the highest authority and risked peace- it was believed that to have taken something precious from the people, something precious should be taken in return." Snow tilted his head towards Quint, and his blood ran cold, because now he knew why his leg had been amputated. Snow continued, either unaware or very, very aware of Quint's fear. "Sometimes they took a hand, sometimes a foot. But for continued treason, there was always the option of taking _another_. For grevious treason, there was always the option of taking them _all_." Snow smiled, and it seemed gentle but his eyes, oh god his _eyes_. Quint could feel cool sweat resting on his skin, burning against his useless leg.

"Do we understand each other," Snow murmured, "Quint?"

Quint nodded. It was all he could do. He was Victor because there had to be a Victor, but any further out of line and he would lose far more than a leg.

"Very well, then," Snow said, standing again and clearly taking pleasure in the length and pain it took Quint to follow suit, "You have much to do- you are crowned Victor tomorrow. Good day, Mr Barkwater."

Quint was surrounded by guards again as he began to make his way out. But he couldn't stop. He couldn't just back down. He _couldn't_.

"Mr President," he managed through pained breaths. He turned around despite the extra movement this took, because he needed to see Snow's eyes. "Are they dead? All of them?"

Snow regarded Quint. "Yes."

But his eyes, _oh_ , his eyes. His eyes were just as uncertain as Quint's own were. _Snow couldn't be certain. Snow didn't know if they were dead._

 _They could be alive._

Deep in Quint's chest, a tiny flicker of hope kindled itself again.

Quint nodded. "Thank you, Mr President."

The walk was painful, but bearable. Quint had to bear it for the tiny chance that he would one day have other people's pain to bear with them.

Quint had to keep moving, in the hope that the last three days remained as uncertain to Snow as they were to him.

* * *

 _Days writing, hours formatting on a tiny mobile screen,and I still don't like this chapter. Go figure._

 _Thank you for all your submissions so far- more tributes would be greatly appreciated._

 _I'd go into more detail these notes but my mobile's going to give in if I make this file any longer. As ever, thank you for reading this far._


	3. TEMPORARY: Updated Character Listings

IVAYLO CHARACTERS

* * *

[ DISTRICT 3 TRIBUTE SUBMISSIONS STILL OPEN]

Thank you to all submitters; I recieved a plethora of wonderful characters from you all. However; none of you went for District 3! It's incredible! ;) Out of dozens, nobody went for one of the options. As such, if you want to submit to District 3, that option's still open. Other than that, I would like to welcome the following characters to the collective-

1\. Robyn Blackthorn, District 9 tribute- submitted by JadeRavenstone

2\. Nico Marquette, District 6 tribute- submitted by Munamana

3\. Vita Audixil, Avox- submitted by TechnicolourRaincoat

4\. Velarius Eppoxe, Master of Ceremonies- submitted by deathless . smile

5\. Seraphina Valerian, daughter of Lexus- submitted by MidnightRaven323

6\. Viridian Calotte, District 3 tribute- submitted by LokiThisIsMadness

* * *

JACQUERIE CHARACTERS

* * *

The following characters are previous submissions from the last SYOT, Jacquerie, many of whom shall be returning to Ivaylo.

1\. Elizabeth Adews- District 7- submitted by AbbyCoraby123

2\. Odyssea "Emma" Kjaergaard- District 4- submitted by akuhilangditelanbumi

3\. Glace Gratton- District 1- submitted by MsAir

4\. Cesal Nesbin- District 8- submitted by GoldenfeatherKyru

5\. Quint Barkwater- District 6- submitted by Glassgift

6\. Emil Reynolds- District 12- submitted by Regster

7\. Theon Veux- District 2- submitted by SeungriPanda98

8\. Sisyphia Maurice- Tribute Escort- submitted by Anna Blake

9\. Alexander "Alec" Taupe- Capitol Barman- submitted by Gerry

10\. Rufus Warnke- Former Victor of District 9- submitted by Katrace

* * *

ILLUSION CHARACTERS

* * *

Jacquerie was essentially a reboot of my old SYOT from my old account Ideographer, called Illusion. As such, I carried on many of my favourite submissions from Illusion into small parts in Jacquerie and Ivaylo.

1\. Lexus Valerian- Games Technological Director- submitted by MidnightRaven323

2\. Ronan Horne- District 4 tribute- submitted by Munamana

3\. Anamaria Dimitri- Head of the Capitol Guild- submitted by MidnightRaven323

4\. Anna Corinna- District 2 tribute- submitted by Realusernamesaretoomainstream


	4. Survival

_With thanks to deathless . smile , JadeRavenstone and MidnightRaven323 for your reviews of the last chapters._

 _This chapter firmly hits the T rating in its stride due to scenes of impromptu medical procedures. If you're faint of heart, this may not be for you._

* * *

 **THREE DAYS EARLIER**

 **N 50º 54.80544' , W 115º 51.70896'**

* * *

A ringing in her ears; the echo of a crash. She frowned vaguely, tilting her head to try and place the sound, but frowned more as she realised the sound was ricocheting around her head. Frowning, stirring, she slowly started to sift together facts from the maze of semi-consciousness she was in.

Her name was Odyssea Ermintrude Kjaergaard, but she called herself Emma because neither name fit. Her mother had died three years ago. Her father had died three weeks ago. Her brother, Andreas, was probably still alive. She was probably still alive. She had volunteered for the Games to escape her arranged marriage- she had watched people die, so many, since then. She had killed, killed so many, since then.

She had been a Career. She had betrayed the Careers with her district partner Ronan, then betrayed him in turn. She had met six others, six rebels, who had reluctantly folded her into a plan to escape. They were-

 _Were they alive?_

Now the memories started rushing back. Ronan submerged in mutts tearing flesh. An elevator shaft; climbing with six others through it, to the top of nowhere. The hatch to the arena. A shining metal dome with the hovercraft's bullets ripping into it, and forming a rope with her paracord to-

 _-"QUINT!" Glace screamed, her voice cracking in pain on the word. From Emma's vantage point she could just about see the hovercraft firing bullets into their ally; Quint collapsing in a heap, sliding out of sight on the sloping metal. Glace started to surge upwards despite her injured arm, but Theon yanked her back._

 _"You crazy?!" He gasped. "Quint's dead! We'll have time to mourn if we survive!"_

 _"He could still-" Glace seemed horrified, reluctant to admit the truth to herself. Cesal and Emil slid down the metal to them, Cesal wrapping an arm around a support and helping Emil support himself against the scaffold. Emil's leg was slick with blood and seemed to be not quite in the right position. Emma's stomach threatened to heave._

 _"Oh, god," Elizabeth said heavily. "Emil?"_

 _Emil was losing blood and fast. His face was already unnaturally pale, and he was barely conscious. Emma looked down at the paracord rope she was hastily fashioning inbetween climbing down._

 _"We have to get down, now," Emma called to the rest as she flung the rope across to Cesal, who barely caught it. "The hovercraft's gonna come for us next. Tourniquet his leg, then get him down or leave him. We don't have time to do anything else."_

 _Perhaps it seemed harsh, but Emma was in this to survive, not make friends. Quint was already dead, they couldn't stop that. Emil probably had severe blood loss and a possible broken leg; even if they made it off the dome, he'd be nigh-impossible to save in the wilds, hundreds of miles from Panem._

 _Emma had enough training to save herself. She had never trained to save anyone else._

 _Elizabeth seemed to make up her mind. "She's right," she yelled, "We have to get down now. Cesal, you need a hand?"_

 _Cesal had tied the rope tight around Emil's leg. "Yeah," he gasped out reluctantly- clearly his barely-healed injury was starting to affect him. Elizabeth groaned, half climbed and half slid over to Cesal, and together they lifted Emil and began moving down from support to support._

 _Theon looked upwards, half-helping Glace down the scaffold as Emma began to rush down it as fast as possible._

 _"The hovercraft's rising," Theon yelled. "Maybe it's leaving?"_

 _Emma risked a glance upwards. The hovercraft was indeed beginning to rise. But the possibility of something far worse grazed her mind, and then stuck with horrible clarity._

 _Her yell was loud and high enough to disturb the birds in the tall trees around the arena. A number of jabberjays were among them; they took to the air and screeched stark echoes of her voice._

 _"IT'S DROPPING A BOMB!"_

 _The jabberjays called her warning into the terrible sunrise._

 _And then six people started incoherently and inexpertly scrambling down the scaffold supports on the dome that held the arena. Some were yelling out, some were screaming; and one, she wasn't sure who, had taken to moaning 'Oh God' in a staccato, breathless tone. It took Emma a moment to realise it was her._

 _Emma was the first to reach the end of the supports; from there, the dome became a nigh-vertical drop of around ten to fifteen metres to the bottom. She helplessly started to put together some manner of plan; but none came to her mind, blanked as it was by adrenaline and fear. She looked up as the hovercraft rose to a hovering standstill; Theon and Glace made it to the bottom of the scaffold with her._

 _"What now?" Glace gasped. Emma grit her teeth and scanned the dome, trying to figure out a method. Her hair had come undone from its rough braid and stuck now to her back and face, obscuring her sight. She took a hand from the support to brush it away._

 _"We have to slide down it," she said. "We don't have any other choice."_

 _Elizabeth, Cesal and Emil slowly dragged themselves down to meet the group. Emil was almost entirely unconscious now, and Cesal's face was pale with pain. Elizabeth shook her head._

 _"We can't slide down that, it's basically vertical," she argued. Emma rounded on her._

 _"Got a better idea?!" She snapped, her fear manifesting into anger. Elizabeth bit her lip._

 _"No."_

 _"Then-" a whistling overhead, and every head looked up. A metal cylinder dropping from the hovercraft._

 _"GO!" Emma screamed, but it was lost in the sound of igniting air and cracking concrete, light around her, dust and fire everywhere. She was sliding down the dome now but so was the rest of the dome, coming down around her, a person whistling past her in the air- who was it? She reached out but instead of touching a person her fingers touched the ground and an almighty_ boom _behind her and-_

She was certainly awake now. Her eyes split open and she sat up with a gasp. She checked herself over first- no broken bones, at least none she could feel. She flexed her shoulders and groaned; every muscle in her back was on fire. Her backpack had cushioned the impact onto the ground, it seemed; the only major injury she could sense were the bruised and torn muscles in her upper and lower back. Her movement would be limited for a while, but she would recover.

She tried to stand up but promptly fell backwards again, wailing instinctively as her aching back hit the ground again. Her ears were still ringing and her balance had left her. She dragged herself over to a tree and used it as a support, pulling her shaking legs upwards until they were standing. She took one step, then another; then she could take in her surroundings.

Around her, on the ground, in the air, in her eyes- dust. A haze of debris had been created while she had been knocked unconscious; it obscured the grass beneath her feet, covering it in a thin layer of rubble and grit. Emma stood on the edge of destruction. Behind her was a huge, now slightly torn and broken pine tree; in front of her, partially obscured by particulates in the air, the remains of the arena lay crumbled at her feet.

Concrete and steel lay in twisted heaps; in some places, the curved structure of the dome had collapsed intact and taken the inner structure of the fake Capitol with it, but in some places buildings had survived- around ten floors of the Training Center, though significantly battered and likely to fall at any minute, still stood. A few buildings still stood, but none stood intact. Many were scorched, as if a fire had passed through them. Emma wondered if that was the missile or their own doing.

The wreckage had created a clearing almost larger than the eye could see; the damage was almost overwhelming. Emma started to turn, to try and discern any figures in the wreckage- she saw none.

She tried to speak but the dust had settled in her mouth and the words came out as a squeak. She mustered up what little saliva she could, spat out as much of the dust as she was able, then coughed and tried again.

"Hello?" She croaked into the dust and carnage. Her voice echoed uncomfortably among the soft sounds of dust clouds and harsh sounds of metal scraping against stone. "Hello?"

Nothing. Emma started pacing the edge of the arena, huge as it was; tried to pick out her location, the location of anyone else, _anything_. The arena had been surrounded on one side by a moat of water intended to represent the real Capitol reservoirs; while the stone had cracked the moat remained. Emma paced the debris-tainted water anxiously, calling out when she could. She could see nothing, percieve nothing, that lived. Everything was awful wreckage or dark, dense and horrifyingly tall trees; but nothing surrounding her visibly lived.

Emma was not one for panic. She had trained for isolated survival; the Training Center of District 4 had attempted to cover all bases. But it wasn't her- her _person_. Even after she split with the Careers she did so with Ronan. District 4 was a fishing district, and Zone 7, where she had lived, was the smallest but densest area of them all. Noise, clamour, urbanity; all of these thrummed of home.

This silent world of hundreds of miles of loneliness terrified her. She could die out here. She could _die_ out here and nobody could ever know she survived the bombings- Andreas would never _know_. The panic came thick and fast and now Emma stopped pacing around the edge and started running, weaving through the trees and wreckage.

"Is anyone here?" She yelled despite her voice cracking on the words. "Is anyone alive? GUYS? _ANYONE?!"_

* * *

His consciousness swam in and out in bits and pieces, but it was undoubtedly there. If he squinted slightly, frowned, he could hear something; a trickling sound, but- not.

 _Ugh._ His hair felt disgusting. He hated the feel of greasy hair. He scrunched up his face slightly in distaste, rolling slightly and trying to stretch out.

 _NO. NO NO NO-_

He could hear what sounded like the echo of his own voice screaming as he was dragged into wakefulness. He tried to move and heard the start of a scream on his tongue before he bit down hard on it to still his own cries; the events of the past few days and a lifetime beyond that had taught him that above all else, to survive he must be _quiet._

But the _pain_ \- oh god, the _pain_. The swallowed scream escaped as a strangled, pitiful whine as he felt his leg shifting slightly where he had moved it in waking. It felt like it was scraping against _itself_ , god, had the gunshots really ruined his leg that much-?

" _Sh_." That voice was not his own. His eyes opened and focused on a boy- a man? A teenager, certainly. He was dressed in bloodstained grey clothing; a torn grey jacket, grey pants, grey plimsolls. His tousled brown hair half-fell in front of his hazel eyes as he looked up.

"Hey, kid," Cesal said weakly, but with an element of relief. "Mind keeping the screaming quiet?"

"Ce-s," Emil managed. He could feel the uneven ground beneath him; it felt like the soil he had left behind when he last went on his foraging trips outside District 12. Cesal was kneeling over him, bloodstained but clearly relieved. "Wha-"

His voice failed, but his intent had been clear enough for Cesal to pick up.

"We got down the dome, but the Capitol fuckers sent in a missile," Cesal said, spreading out his hands for emphasis of a blast radius. "Boom. Luckily we got out of the way quickly enough." Cesal smiled, and although it was smeared with blood and dirt and fear, it was the first truly genuine smile Emil had ever seen frim Cesal. "We're out, kid. You and me, we got out the arena."

"Then-" Questions were coming and going in Emil's mind, but one finally settled long enough for him to parse it into words. "Why do we have to be -quiet?"

"Hm." Cesal looked up from Emil and around. "Listen."

The sound was faint, then became stronger as Emil focused upon it.

" _-UYS?! PLEASE?! ANYONE_?" A female voice filtering through the dense treeline, familiar as a typically far less panicked, far more cocky voice. Emma Kjaergaard, the Career from 4; the final addition to the escapee group, the most potentially dangerous.

"She's leading us in," Cesal whispered, his mouth close enough to Emil's ear for his hair to tickle Emil's face.

"Why?"

"I dunno," Cesal snapped. "She's a Career. She's hostile. She has a huge sword, and that's no innuendo. What reason would she have for wanting our golden company?"

"What reason would she have to kill us?"

Cesal looked down at Emil with a kind of exasperated fondness. "You're kinda dying right now, dumbass, what do you know about that?"

The statement panicked Emil a little more, but it was really only piling on top of the panic he was feeling already. The pain was overwhelming, and he was starting to feel like he was floating. "She's nice. I know it."

"You don't know shit," Cesal retaliated. "You're a flower-picker with blood loss, kid." But the words were said with a kind of horrified sadness that scared Emil; like Cesal was already condemning him to death.

Well. Emil wasn't entirely powerless on the ground, in pain and weightless as he felt.

" _HEY!_ " he called as loudly as he could before Cesal clapped a hand over his face. Emil looked questioningly at Cesal- really, why was he so scared of a Career _outside_ of the arena?- but then it hit him why Cesal was so scared as he heard a person beginning to crash through the undergrowth towards them.

 _Hundreds of miles from home. The pain he felt in his leg. The weightlessness. Cesal's fear._

Emil had injured himself so badly he was losing blood. And the amount of injuries he had seen of blood loss, the blood loss he remembered losing before he had passed out halfway down the dome-

Emma was a pragmatist, and Emma might say that for the group to proceed they would have to make sure they did not have to proceed at the speed of the slowest.

Emil tried to sit up but Cesal shoved him down again, and now the half-shroud of trees burst open; but four people emerged, not one.

* * *

The dust had whipped into her eyes when she had run, but it didn't really bother her. Elizabeth had heard the sound of voices, of _life_ , and after half an hour of regaining consciousness and trying to quietly search out allies, to hear the one person she was concerned of being an enemy calling out, and an ally she was concerned of being dead calling back- it had wrenched her heart and she had been sprinting before she could so much as think about it. Her muscles ached from the slide and collapse of the dome, but she wasn't injured and she wanted to see someone, to know that the others were alright. Elizabeth tripped and stumbled across the forest floor, the feeling familiar, like a homecoming.

A dense shroud of trees she burst through like a bullet; and she stood in a clearing.

And so did five others.

Glace Gratton, slim but strong, her arm wrapped in blood-soaked bandages from a mutt attack but no less imbued with a determined kind of energy, pushed through into the clearing almost as Elizabeth did. There were leaves in her hair and streaks of blood on her face but her typically emotionless face showed a flicker of joy.

Emma Kjaergaard, with her tanned skin and strong body, looked unlike herself with the look of panic and relief on her face. Her light brown hair had come out of its ponytail and now clung to her sweat-soaked face; so typically put together and cocky, to see her so dishevelled was a surprising change.

On the floor, Cesal Nesbin crouched over an unconscious Emil Reynolds. Cesal was pale and shaking but as defiant as he had ever been; he was poised above Emil as if ready to leap and defend him at a moment's notice. Elizabeth was comforted to see outlier district tributes like herself once more; but it was significantly less of a comfort to see Emil.

White as a sheet apart from the red-brown blood soaking his grey clothing, his pants leg had been pulled up by Cesal, revealing the extent of his injuries. The outside of his left thigh, just above his knee, was a mess of flesh and blood; his kneecap appeared to have pushed itself sideways, at least two inches to the right. Elizabeth could smell the blood still flowing despite Cesal's application of a tourniquet; it was an effort not to gag at the sight of his mangled leg.

A rustle of leaves and a rush of footfall and Theon Veux, tall and tanned and with a significant number of twigs sticking in his black-brown hair, burst through the undergrowth and into the clearing, almost tripping over Cesal and Emil in his effort to stop still. He looked around the group with an expression of shock.

"Holy _shit_ ," he breathed. "We're all alive-"

His gaze fell to Emil's leg.

"-Holy _shit._ " He murmured. "That's- uh-"

"What?" Cesal snapped. He seemed wary of everyone in the group, but his eyes flicked especially between Emma and Theon.

"Dude, calm down. We're all alive, this is a _good_ thing." Emma said. Cesal laughed slightly, hysterical.

"Not likely, Career girl."

"Oh my god," Elizabeth breathed in exasperation. "Cesal, we're out, okay? We're not even obliged to kill each other anymore. Just- calm down."

" _No_ ," Cesal grumbled stubbornly. His eyes, red-rimmed, flicked to Emil. And Elizabeth got it.

" _Oh_ ," she murmured, the selfsame protective drive that had brought her to the revos kicking in now. "Okay. _Okay_. We're going to stay here, guys, for a little while. We're going to pool our resources and see what we have, and _fix everyone up_. We stick together now; we'll figure out the rest later. But we _stick_ together. All of us. Okay?"

The statement seemed to hit hard with both Glace and Cesal, who made a grunting sound to hide a sound that almost sounded like a sob. Glace fluidly stepped forward and shrugged off her backpack.

"I don't have much," she admitted, "But I have a suture kit, some ration packs; if I have it, it's the group's." She looked around the group; her calm, measured eyes flickered for a moment with something akin to worry.

And then she tipped out the backpack's contents, and after a moment's hesitation removed her empty belt of throwing knives and threw it on top of the pile. It was a gesture. Glace, of all of them the most enigmatic and suspicious of trust, was trusting them.

Theon stepped forward. "I have Emma's sword and that's it." He placed it on the pile, leaning it against Glace's backpack. "But if you want it back-"

"-Keep it," Emma said then; she too stepped forward, pulling her sword from her belt and putting it beside Theon's. "I have a couple of med kits, some ration packs; but I'm going to be honest, it's mostly weapons in here." She tipped out her belongings onto the earth, bouncing into the pile. "But, uh, I'll tag myself into this if you're willing to have me."

Elizabeth's axe dropped onto the pile unceremoniously, as she shrugged off her own makeshift backpack and dropped her plastic crate on top of the collection. "Ration packs, more than enough for us all," she said. "Emma, we'll have you if you'll have us."

Cesal gestured vaguely to a backpack that had already been sitting nearby the pile. "I have my dagger and Emil has his baton, and whatever the hell's in his backpack. Emil, what's in your-"

His voice cut off harshly. "Emil?"

Elizabeth's gaze was drawn to Emil. His face was almost blue. His eyes were closed now.

" _Shit_ ," Theon said, kneeling beside Cesal, who had frozen with wide eyes and shaking hands. "Emil? Emil, can you hear me?" He shook Emil's shoulder, then when no response came slapped him. "Emil?!" He looked up at the group. "Is anyone here a medic?"

Helplessly, Cesal gestured at Emil.

Theon groaned.

" _Great_. Just our goddamn luck. Have any of you taken med courses? Careers?"

"I skipped medical training," Emma muttered vaguely. "If he was drowning I could help, but-"

"-I have some training," Glace said, kneeling beside Emil and Theon. She placed her hand on Emil's neck, pressing down on the right side. She nodded.

"He has a pulse, but not much of one. We need to stem any further bloodflow or he may lose that leg."

" _Christ_ ," Cesal blurted out, sitting back on the ground. " _Christ_ , he's gonna- he'll be okay, right? He's gonna be okay, right?" He was rocking back and forth almost imperceptibly. He kept making abortive movements towards Emil then stopping, pulling himself away, curling up further into himself.

Elizabeth wasn't a medic, but she knew people. Cesal was afraid; of losing Emil, of failing to save him, perhaps.

The former Careers were working in an unspoken tandem; Glace was dictating the work and checking Emil's vital signs while Theon prepped the suture kit and Emma started to assess the mess of muscle, skin and blood that constituted Emil's outer thigh. Elizabeth, entirely untrained in medical intervention and survival, sat down next to Cesal and tentatively rubbed circles against his back, like she would with her brother. Cesal tensed but didn't stop her. His eyes didn't leave Emil.

"He's been shot up, pretty badly," Emma murmured, her pallor faintly green.

"If I remember survival training, you need to figure out the bullet's path and remove it if it's still there," Theon muttered as he threaded a needle. "Man, I wish I could've had this kit when I sutured my chest."

"You sutured _your own chest_?" Glace enunciated with a frown as she tipped half a bottle of water over her hands. "With what?"

Theon worked his jaw slightly. "Paperclip, thread from a chair. Y'know."

"When I'm finished with Emil, I'm checking you out next," Glace asserted.

"Watch out, Lizzy, you have competition," Theon quipped, putting on a smile he clearly didn't mean.

"Quit flirting and sew up his leg," Cesal intervened with a panic-laced force. "He's bleeding out already."

"He's going to be fine," Emma assured Cesal, although her expression didn't seem to agree with her words. Her hands hovered uncomfortably over Emil's ruined flesh, and Glace shot her a glance.

"Emma, how about you search through Emil's backpack for anything helpful?" She suggested. Her tone didn't suggest weakness on Emma's part, merely pragmatism, and Emma seemed happy to fall back on the excuse. Glace turned to Cesal and Elizabeth on the side. "Can one of you wash up and try to assess his leg?"

Cesal, while perhaps willing, seemed frozen in time as Emil lay on the ground. Elizabeth had seen bullet wounds before; many of them inflicted upon her revo allies back in District 7. She wasn't used to dealing with them, but she was used to switching off her fear. She came forward, washed her hands quickly with splashes of water, and began assessing the situation.

His leg was bloody and his kneecap was sticking out two inches to the left of his leg, but it looked worse than it was; at least, she really hoped it was. Elizabeth first turned her attention to his knee. It was an injury she had seen once or twice- there were always people falling from trees in District 7, and a dislocation like this was simple, if horrible, to fix. Emil was truly out of it; he didn't stir even as she pushed at it experimentally. Elizabeth bent up his leg slowly, biting her lip at the sight of his muscles working against the unnatural protrusion of his kneecap underneath his skin. She positioned her thumbs on the patella, pushed; a grating feeling and a soundless connection into place and the kneecap was back in. It would be swollen and sore but that was irrelevant compared to the worst injury.

The bullets had half-destroyed his outer thigh. There were at least three paths of bullets that didn't go through to the other side, and blood was coming from all angles and pooling in the craters and lacerations in his leg, obscuring the bullet paths.

Elizabeth grit her teeth and began feeling into the pools of blood, searching the flesh for holes. She had no tools; she had to remove the bullets with her fingers alone. She felt a horrible shifting beneath her fingers as skinless muscles moved; she pinched, twisted and a shining piece of metal bounced onto the dust-layered earth. Blood resurged.

Glace had joined in now and two more bullets hit the ground in seconds. Glace shook her head.

"He's bleeding too fast; grab his jacket, stop it-"

Elizabeth pressed down diligently with Emil's balled-up jacket, but it wasn't working well. Emil had lost a horrifying amount already, and Theon had only just started to approach the torn skin.

"We need to stem the bloodflow," Glace snapped. For the first time, however, she looked lost; Elizabeth realised Glace had no idea what to do.

"We could-" Theon's voice trailed off.

"Cauterise it."

Cesal had finally gotten himself together enough to stand up. "I saw a guy do it once in the Black Bands. He cut up his hand and he heated up his knife and put it on the cut. It stops-"

"-How hot?" Elizabeth said, momentarily loosening her hold over Emil's leg in an abortive movement to get up.

"I dunno, pretty damn hot," Cesal said. "He put it in a fireplace."

"Emma, hold down on this," Elizabeth snapped. "Glace, check Emil's backpack for any med kits, see what you can find. Theon, start sewing up any minor wounds. I'm starting a fire."

Elizabeth was from District 7. Fire was all too familiar as both a help and a hindrance; and she could create a fire, if she wanted, without any problems at all. As she raced across the clearing collecting up dry leaves and twigs, memories flashed in her mind of the Presidential Mansion, the chariots- her dress aflame by her own hand, to destroy Snow's hold on the people.

It hadn't worked, but it had certainly brought her here. Perhaps here, the flames could finally help, not hinder.

Someone had added matches to the pile and Elizabeth snatched them up, lighting one and kindling a fire in seconds. Making it large took minutes, minutes they were starting to lose. Emma and Cesal were now both trying to stem the bloodflow from Emil's leg, but they were fighting a losing battle.

The fire grew under her watch and someone, Theon perhaps, handed her a sword. She thrust it into the flame, watched as the tempered metal grew red-hot and uncomfortably warm to the touch even at the hilt. When she couldn't take the heat any longer she pulled out the sword, cherry-red and almost spitting with heat.

"Sorry," she murmured to Emil.

And then she lay the flat of the blade across his leg.

* * *

Theon winced at the smell of burning flesh and the faint, half-unconscious moans of pain from Emil as Elizabeth finished cauterising the wound. The bloodflow ceased, but the wound looked as ragged and awful as it had before.

"I have medicine; something from Emil's pack. Anyone know it?" Emma held up a number of vials, and Theon was surprised to know them from training.

"I know that. It accelerates the healing process."

Cesal blinked in surprise, before pulling it from Emma's hand and liberally drizzling the vial over Emil's leg. "I know this shit, he used it on me yesterday. You think it'll work?"

"You better hope," Theon said. "I'm gonna sew it up now. I swear, if Emil gets better, I'm starting my own medical offices."

The group fell into a strange quiet as Theon began tacking together Emil's leg with the suture kit. Glace, paling, began to see to her own injured arm, bloodied as it was beneath the bandages. Elizabeth and Emma quietly unpacked a medical kit and began to help her; Glace slowly submitted to the help. Cesal, seeming at a loss, began sorting through the pile of belongings; he found what he was looking for in Emma's pile. Draping a large piece of tarpaulin across the trees and over them, he tied it on with paracord and then saw to the fire still burning just outside the makeshift shelter. He wasn't an expert in stoking fires, it seemed, but he seemed to be taking some modicum of pleasure from distracting himself. Theon hummed to himself, pinning his tongue momentarily between his teeth as he worked.

"So," he began. "I'm Theon."

Elizabeth frowned as she unwrapped bandages from Glace's arm. "Yeah, we know?"

"No," Theon said. "You know I'm Theon the Career, Theon the tribute-we all know each other inside the arena, when others are listening. But we're outside the arena now. Nobody's listening."

This revelation washed over the group with a soft buzz of surprise. Everyone was always being listened to, but not here; not hundreds of miles from home in a forest.

"So I'm Theon," Theon announced. "Theon Veux, but it's not really my name, I think. I'm from District 2. I was- I was taken off the streets, and trained by Peacekeeper Veux as his way of vicariously winning the Games. Didn't really work out for him, though." He tried to keep his tone casual despite the highly personal information he was imparting. He purposefully left out his fight for survival with his siblings of the streets, his killing of his sister; he couldn't stomach telling them that. He gave them only what he felt was necessary to understand him, to _properly_ ally with him.

There was silence for a moment in the group. Theon quietly finished suturing Emil's leg and sat back, cleaning both himself and Emil with half a water bottle and some of the precious antiseptic in the vial.

"I'm Emma Kjaergaard," Emma said after a long pause. She sat back and looked at Theon, allowing Elizabeth to continue treating Glace. "I'm from District 4. I'm here because my father arranged a marriage and- I didn't really want that, not for me, I... I ran. I'm really here because I wanted to escape." She chuckled mirthlessly. "I think I managed that, at least."

"No kidding," Cesal sighed, sitting back down and regarding the group. "I'm Cesal- uh, Cesal Nesbin, if it matters. I'm from District 8. I'm- well, I was kind of a gang member, Black Bands if anyone knows 'em. I'm here because my friend, or- my boss, both- was reaped, and I volunteered in his place." He looked down at his hands for a long time. "So I'm kind of, yeah, not exactly a big player in this group, you know." He seemed distant; he sat apart from the group, but his eyes did not leave Emil.

"We talking height or importance?" Theon couldn't help the tiny jab, and Cesal looked up with annoyance, if not anger.

"Don't think I couldn't kick your ass, Veux. How'd you think I lost these fingers?" He held up one of his hands; some fingers were missing joints, and one was lost entirely. His smile was pained but faintly amused.

"Factory accident?"

"Kicking ass, Theon. I lost them kicking ass." He had a tiny, genuine smirk on his face; so did Theon.

"You kick with your arm?" He rebutted; Cesal snorted slightly, sharing a faint smile with Theon, and leaned back again. Glace interjected quietly.

"I'm Glace Gratton. I'm from District 1. I came to avenge my friend's death, and to try and understand his position of rebellion. Rhys." She paused to inhale sharply as Emma tipped some antiseptic on her wound. "I hope he would consider this to have been right."

"He would have, Glace," Elizabeth replied softly. "I'm Elizabeth Adews. I'm from District 7. I was probably reaped because I'm a member of a revo faction back home. I'm here because-" At this she paused. She looked around the group, resting her gaze momentarily on Theon before training it on the ground.

"-Because the Capitol doesn't control us."

This was the first time the Capitol had been mentioned. In fact, the fact they had all just defected from the entirety of Panem, the fact that they were hundreds of miles from anything; nobody had wanted to say anything about it until now.

A quiet rested on the group a moment.

"Yeah," Emma said then, "Fuck the Capitol." Her voice carried slightly louder than she probably intended, and it echoed in the air.

But no retribution came, from anyone. They were freed from the Capitol. They were _free_.

A short, surprised bark of laughter came from Cesal.

"Not quite as, uh, _poetic_ as Elizabeth, maybe," he said, "But I like it. Yeah, fuck the Capitol!"

There was an almost collective exhale now; the tension had bled from the group. For once, they did not have to be careful, be ready from attacks on all sides; the Capitol was gone and they were free to stop being tributes, stop being scared, and just be people for once.

"I agree entirely. Fuck the Capitol." Glace asserted, with such intensity that Emma started giggling.

"Yeah, you know what? Fuck the Capitol, and fuck the peacekeepers too," Theon joined in; the words were like a release of his tongue into freedom, from his father and from Panem, and freedom tasted sweet. Elizabeth laughed, then, high and joyful.

"Fuck the Capitol; President Snow can die too," she joined in in melodic tones. Cesal pointed at Emil, who, while still unconscious, looked alive, and far better now he was freed of some of the blood he had been soaked in. He adopted a ridiculous Capitol accent and spoke loudly into the forest, disturbing a few birds at rest.

"That's Emil Reynolds, he's from District 12, and on his behalf I would like to formally announce- _fuck the Capitol!_ "

They were all laughing now, despite the pain, despite the fear, despite being isolated and alone in a forest hundreds of miles from home. All these things were true, but one thing was true that was more important- they were free.

They were _free_.

And that was when the explosion happened.

* * *

 _I swear to god, this is memetic. I shoot Quint in the stomach, I'm put in hospital with abdominal pain. I dislocate Emil's knee, I'm in hospital right now with the same. I fear for next chapter, I really do._

 _Ugh. This chapter. It's way too long, strings together poorly, and answers too few questions. But I'm glad to reveal that, yes, all seven tributes are alive and- okay, not well, but alive. Would they have actually survived that in reality? Does surgery work that way? Has screening been too distracted yelling at her own leg for being frustratingly unable to bend to actually write and edit a coherent chapter? Make your own guesses there, folks._

 _In any case, bi-weekly updates aren't working out for me; I'm just not a disciplined writer unless I'm being made to write every day. So guess what? I'm going to start updating every day. Rejoice/despair, at your leisure. If the writing this chapter is sub-par, blame it on the painkillers. I mean, I'm not on any, but blame it on them anyway; and do give me constructive criticism if you wish to._

 _Also! I would like to welcome a new character to the group- thank you to LokiThisIsMadness for Viridian Calotte, who shall now take the District 3 spot. With that, submissions are closed- the fun may begin. ;)_

 _As ever, thank you for reading this far._


	5. Probability Interplay

_With thanks to Glassgift, MidnightRaven323, Technicolour Raincoat, JadeRavenstone, deathless . smile and LokiThisIsMadness for your reviews of the previous chapter._

* * *

 **THREE DAYS EARLIER**

 **N 50º 54.80544' , W 115º 51.70896'**

* * *

He was first aware of the dust.

He coughed at the feeling in his throat and found for a while that he couldn't stop coughing. The involuntary motion horrified him; the lack of agency was more terrifying than the action itself.

Eventually, shuddering to a halt, he could breathe, if shallowly. The dust was choking the air, and threatened to choke him too.

He tried to open his eyes to take in where he was, and realised his eyes were already open. He tried to put his hands out, but realised he couldn't move them higher than perhaps three inches; one was half-pinned above his chest, and the other was spread-eagled outwards. He tried to sit up and promptly smacked his head against a barrier he could not see. Dust crashed down more; his head was spinning with pain and darkness.

He stitched together the basic facts in his head in the darkness and the dust.

His name was- he was- He coughed more and winced as he felt the side of his head throbbing in pain. He was- Lexus Valerian. He was the Technological Head of the Hunger Games; he was the Secretary of Technological Innovation back at the Capitol.

He had stayed behind at the arena to give Josiah Lyman and the staff a chance at escaping without blame. He had let the tributes escape the arena, with Seneca Crane at his side. He had run, run through the arena's administrative basement levels-

And then the basement had crashed in on itself.

 _Shit. Oh, shit. Oh, dear god, no._

Lexus started to take in his body's response to movement. His head was throbbing and he felt bruised all over, but nothing hurt like it was trapped or broken; he couldn't feel any crushing forces.

But he couldn't move, either. He experimentally tried to shift back and forth, but a strange honeycomb of walls and holes seemed to surround him; an unyielding concrete floor lay beneath him. After a lot of shifting and wriggling, Lexus managed to move his right hand from its spread-eagled position to just above his face; he started to feel out his entombed position.

A cool metal bar, just above his face. Lexus swallowed and moved his hand down. Rough concrete; he discovered shards of what felt like plastic and wiring; perhaps the fluorescent lighting? Lexus bit his lip. That was the ceiling. That was very, very bad. Why hadn't it collapsed on him entirely? How was he still alive-

 _Ah._ Just above his pelvis, Lexus felt out the reason for his survival. There was a huge steel bar, one of the major foundations of the arena; it had probably been set into one of the basement walls Lexus had been nearby. When the arena had been blown up- because that was almost certainly what had happened- Lexus must have been lucky enough to fall under it. The rest of the debris aboce him, steel and concrete alike, was being held up by this single metal bar. Move one piece, and he could be buried under tonnes of rock.

In short- he had been buried, intact and alive, twenty metres underground.

Lexus would have laughed if he didn't feel so much like crying. Sheer luck, the probability of which was almost incalculable, had left him safe and alive, and yet he was trapped. What was the fairness in that? Mathematics was conspiring against him; probability had decided to mock him in the cruellest way, playing with his life like mortal clay in immortal hands.

He tried to laugh and it came out in a wretched, strangled sob, muffled in the dust-filled, de-oxygenated hole in which he was doomed to die. Was this justice? Was this _justice_? Saving hundreds and being rewarded by a slow, torturous death in a lightless hell? It wasn't fair. It wasn't _fair_ -

Lexus slammed his hand furiously against the concrete just at the top of his head.

His hand shot out without resistance.

Lexus frowned. He twisted and turned until he lay on his stomach, lifting his head just above the ground and facing out into the black abyss that had been confining the top of his head before.

He stretched out both hands. He felt out into the abyss.

His hands both slid along the concrete floor without resistance. He widened them, and once more did so without resistance. He shuffled forward a little, raising his arms upwards at the elbows.

The way beyond him, in one direction only, was clear. Lexus almost choked on the notion of freedom.

Wriggling forward, partially on his elbows and partially on his belly, Lexus managed to move forward and out of the tiny partition he had been miraculously encased in. For the first time, he could lean up; then sit up. He squinted into the dark, but he still couldn't see where he was going; he couldn't so much as see his hand in front of his face. Feeling out his way, slowly and carefully, Lexus stood up.

He could stretch out his arms in some directions, but not others. He could step forward great directions in some ways, but hit debris and shaking metal bars in others. Slowly, excruciatingly, Lexus began putting together a mental map of where he was.

The corridor he had been in was the major sloping corridor to the outside of the arena and the helipad; at a guess, he'd say it was around two meters wide and six meters tall. He explosion must have collapsed the side of the corridor he had been standing on; it was sheer luck that he had survived. However, the other side of the corridor was still intact, as far as he could tell. Lexus could now step around a meter at most widthways (if widthways _was_ widthways anymore), reach upwards as far and higher than he could reach, and walk forward around seven meters in-

He stopped. He frowned.

While the ground underfoot was covered in debris, very little of that debris felt soft in any way. Lexus backtracked hastily and crouched down, tentatively feeling for what he had stepped on.

Fabric, faintly warm. He felt out the outline of the fabric and discovered the fabric was wrapping a leg; he found another, too. He felt upwards and discovered the side of a body, then a shoulder, then a face; and just by feeling Lexus knew who it was in an instant.

"Sene-" Lexus broke off into coughing for a moment; the dust tickled his nose and throat, coating everything and filling the air. "Seneca?"

He scrambled to find a pulse and found it; thready, to his horror, but there. He frowned in the darkness; if Seneca had been lucky enough to get trapped in the larger partition of the corridor, why was he in a worse shape than Lexus?

"Seneca? Sen? You hearing me?" Lexus felt upwards again for Seneca's face, then promptly slapped it. A soft groan, warm breath on Lexus' hand.

And then horrible, desperate, gutteral breaths, high and scared and in /pain, and they were Seneca's.

"Sen?" Lexus recieved no response but the frantic intake and exhalation of breath from Seneca, which was almost, almost a scream, but a scream without the necessary conscious input to carry it. Instead, Seneca was making high-pitched moaning noises. Lexus tried to continue while he frantically patted down Seneca to try and find the problem that had Seneca nearly-screaming. "Sen, it's me, it's Lexus, we're okay, we're in the corridor, we're _okay_ -"

Frantically and with increasing clarity words began to get included in Seneca's wails of pain.

"-Please, please," he moaned, "Please, _please, please_ -"

"Please what? Sen, please what?"

"It _hurts_ ," Seneca said, and the words were drawn out on a sob that threatened to shred Lexus' heart. "Please, please, Lex, it _hurts_." The words stopped as strengthless fingers fluttered over Lexus' wrist and then held on, and Seneca was back to helpless breath-screaming.

"What hurts, Seneca?" No response came, and Lexus groaned slightly. "Come on, Seneca, think with your head, please, what hurts?"

" _Chest_ ," Seneca grated out. "Lex, make it stop, please-"

Lexus had begun to probe the lower right of Seneca's chest; the closest area of his body to debris. The effect was instantaneous; Seneca jerked underneath his fingers and began to make one single note of _pain_. Lexus stopped pushing on his chest hastily, and the wail stopped, replaced by a hyperventilating breathing pattern.

"Okay, that was my bad, I'm sorry," Lexus murmured, trying to soothe over the top of Seneca's frantic breaths. "Something must have hit you in the explosion; something- maybe- maybe concrete, or something?" He reached out beyond Seneca and found a nigh-impenetrable wall of rubble. It seemed like just beyond Seneca, the corridor had caved in. Lexus bit his lip.

"Okay. Okay, you were lucky; beyond this the corridor is just bedrock and concrete, so you must've caught the edge of it. You were lucky, Sen."

"We're- the corridor- we're _trapped_?" Seneca moaned. "Oh, _god_ -"

"Hey, hey, Sen, calm down, alright? We're gonna find a way out."

Seneca's laugh was typically clear, sonorous, and rang like a bell, so to hear it reduced to a snuffly tearful chuckle was almost a mockery of what Lexus knew. "You were- always a shit liar, Valerian." He laugh-sobbed. "We're stuck."

"Nah," Lexus said unconvincingly. "There's always a way out, right? Always a solution. That's what Technological Innovation is all about."

"Shut up," Seneca replied quietly. "That- that committee was just a- a publicity stunt for Snow. We never created anything that ever really made a difference."

"Probably because our fearless boss ran off to join the Gamemaker tech crew the second we started making headway."

"You- you joined me."

"Yeah, well." Lexus laid his hand against Seneca's arm and sat down in the rubble next to him. "Can't leave my boss behind."

"Just- your boss?" Now Seneca's pained voice was questioning, and something innate in Lexus rebelled against the tone.

"Woah, okay, Sen, I get we're stuck down here but this is /not a time to figure out relationships."

"It's the only time."

"We're gonna get out of here."

" _Lexus_." The voice was unmistakeable now; it was Seneca exerting his leadership. He was putting forward all the authority he still had the energy to give, and pushing it into this. Lexus sighed, trailing his hand against Seneca's arm slowly.

"Man, if that one night stand really made such an impression on you I should start charging." Lexus laughed. "It was years ago. I-"

Something of the dark snapped Lexus' defensive nature, just a little.

"-Okay. Yes. Maybe there was a reason the one night stand happened."

"Thought so." The tone was more recognisable now as the superioric tones of Seneca Crane winning a bet.

"Shut up," Lexus said, a rare and genuine smile on his face lost in the darkness. "You were my boss, you know? When we first met in that damn tech conference in the Mansion, you know, the one about future leaders in Panem-"

"You were in a sequin tux."

"Oh, god, you remember that?" Lexus laughed. "I looked awful, I thought it looked suave. And Plutarch Heavensbee's walking around and he introduces me to you-"

"-The architect."

"Yeah, Valerian Towers had just been built," Lexus said softly, "But you still stole the conference anyway, with your dumb genius holograph projectors and your dumb swirly beard and your dumb sexy face."

" _Sexy_?"

"Oh, don't pretend like you don't know, Mr Vanity," Lexus snorted. "With your colour scheme and your ridiculous beard and your dumb little smirk."

"Same to you."

"At least I don't have a beard," Lexus retorted.

The silence returned a moment. Lexus sighed; he knew he had to stop stalling.

"Okay. Okay, so maybe I joined the Tech Innovation Committee as your assistant because I liked you. A little. And maybe I followed you from Tech there to Tech here, because I liked you. _A little_. And maybe I rebelled against the Capitol and got stuck here, in this lightless _hole_ , because I followed you wherever you'd lead me. And maybe-" Lexus sighed. "-And maybe-"

"-What?"

Lexus frowned. He squinted into the pile of rubble just beyond Seneca.

"Hang on." He stood up, carefully feeling his way around Seneca, and started to ascend the pile of rubble and rock.

"Where are you going?" Seneca asked worriedly as Lexus began crawling forward into the caved-in corridor.

"I saw something," Lexus murmured vaguely. A piece of concrete scraped against his suit trousers and ripped it; he swore slightly but crawled on.

"You know," Seneca called, "This is probably why your partners all leave you."

"My partners didn't leave me because my lack of availability, they left me because most of them were exotic dancers." Lexus coughed and sniffed with the dust, scrabbling a hand outwards when he couldn't comfortably go any further. He felt a soft breeze of cool oxygen. He could see a pinprick of light. "Bingo!"

"What?"

"It hasn't caved in entirely! There's a way out!"

Seneca laughed, then broke off into a sharp whimper of pain.

Lexus frowned as he began to feel out the route. "But it's tiny. Maybe if I-"

He shuffled back and tried to shift some of the rubble beneath him, but the majority of the rubble was concrete and steel; nothing he could move with his own strength.

"Lex."

"It's- I'm- Oh, _come on_!" Lexus smacked his hand roughly against a concrete block he was failing to shift.

" _Lexus_."

"It's- I can't make the passage bigger myself, and there's no way we could get through it as it is now."

"Come back down."

"Why should I-"

The light was, at first, blinding, and as Lexus scrambled down the rubble he had to cover his eyes with his arm. Slowly, painfully, his eyes adjusted enough that he could lower his hand.

Seneca seemed to have dragged himself into a seated position against the rubble. His face was pale but his eyes were sharp, and in his hands he held a match and a scrap of cloth, one of which, already lit, he held to the other.

"The hell?" Lexus asked. "What's with the matches? You can't smoke in here anyway."

"They confiscated them off of the Veux boy on the hovercraft; apparently he smokes even more than I do." Seneca lit the taper of cloth (Lexus realised that Seneca had torn it from an already-ragged section of his silk brocade waistcoat) and held it up, the two of them taking in their surroundings in the thirty seconds of light the fire afforded them.

A chamber, with a mess of steel and concrete collapsed on two sides, a wall on the other, and the rubble of the almost-collapsed wall behind them. The majority was as Lexus had assumed from feeling out the chamber; where he had been trapped, was, frankly, a mess from which nothing could have been salvaged.

But. On the other side of the chamber was something Lexus had missed. A doorway. The fire petered out and died as the taper burned to the edges of Seneca's fingers and he discarded it, but Lexus was already through the door.

"Light another," he ordered, and reached back to take it as Seneca ripped another piece from his waistcoat.

"You know how many credits this cost?" Seneca muttered, hissing with pain as he pulled at his torn waistcoat.

"Maybe if you didn't dick about buying so much Cinnaware you'd have money left over to buy your own cigarettes."

"Shut up and take the taper."

Lexus took the lighted piece of cloth and held it up into the gloom of the doorway. He whistled lowly.

"Sen?"

"Yeah?"

"We are quite probably the luckiest people in Panem."

"My waistcoat's ruined and I think I've broken several ribs."

"Yeah, well, I still look fantastic, and that's a plus for us both."

"What did you find?"

Lexus grinned into the small, dimly lit room.

"An emergency weapons cache." He threw the taper out of the room, working by feel as he reached out to the slim racks of guns. "One of those contingency plans we worked into the architecture, remember?"

"And they called us crazy."

"It's because we are, Seneca. We're crazy, crazy preppers." Lexus lifted a gun off of the rack. "How good are you with weaponry?"

"Not great, but better than you."

"Think you could identify these?" Lexus stumbled back in the dark and handed the weapon to Seneca.

"-From the feel, I think this is a Capitol Guard submachine, standard issue. The double rail's quite distinctive."

"The fact you can identify these by touch when you're injured in the dark astounds me."

"Want me to pull a rabbit out of it?" Seneca seemed faintly confused, and Lexus grinned.

"No, I was just wondering; what ammo would that kinda gun take?"

"Maybe .45? I wouldn't claim to be a weapons developer for a living, I'm just an electrical engineer. Lexus, why do you want to-"

"Gunpowder or cordite?"

Even in the dark Lexus could tell Seneca had just done his little movement of blinking in surprise.

"Lexus, you crazy asshole."

"Give me another taper."

"With what you're about to try, I'm not lighting a single match till you're done."

"Ye of little faith, Seneca," Lexus said as he started feeling his way back into the gun repository, searching until he came to a number of rattling cardboard boxes in a large plastic tub. Lexus grinned and took the whole tub, feeling his way back out and then up the pile of rubble half-obscuring the exit.

"I'm gonna direct the detonation down with the tub; do you have some fabric? I'm gonna put it inside and try to set off the primer."

With a soft flapping sound Seneca's waistcoat hit his head. Lexus rolled his eyes.

"Cute."

"That's for avoiding the relationship talk."

"I didn't even have a relationship talk with the mother of my kid, Seneca."

"I might be dying."

"You broke some ribs, you're not dying."

"But I might be."

"I hate you."

"Love you too."

Lexus smiled weakly. "Yeah. Love you too, asshole." He started tipping out the boxes of bullets into a pile, looking resolutely towards the pinprick of light and the soft brush of cool air that represented their freedom. He tore up Seneca's waistcoat, trying not to think about how many credits it was worth. He piled the cloth around the hundreds of bullets, then put the tub upside-down on top of it all.

"Okay, Sen, toss up the matches then move out as far as you can. You ready?"

"How far out do you think I can go?"

"Just shuffle or something."

"For someone who just declared his love to me, you're a hell of an asshole, Valerian." Seneca began making pained sounds as he started shifting in the rubble.

"Why is it that every time I say it to someone, they say that?"

"Probably because you never do it. How many times have you been out with someone and dumped them a week later? Remember Cherry Haven?"

Lexus laughed. "Man, she literally tried to stab me with her stilettos. If I hadn't been in the same business class as her in college, I'd think she was an escaped district girl."

Perhaps, Lexus mused, it was strange that under extreme stress the two of them had declared their love for each other and then proceeded to act like nothing had happened. Perhaps it was because of the situation; but Lexus was willing to bet it was far more based upon their mutual uselessness in keeping relationships together. They had tiptoed around their strange semi-friendship and semi-relationship for so long, and ruined so many other relationships in the meanwhile, that it was far easier to pretend like, in the heat of the moment, they hadn't said a word...

The matchbox clattered against the rubble next to him, and Lexus lit it, hesitantly placing it to one of the pieces of cloth, then rushing down the pile of rubble and half-tripping over Seneca's legs as he waited for the-

 _Boom_.

The fireball was mercifully more taken up by the tub and the oxygen-rich environment outside their chamber, but it was still earth-shattering to be that close to it. The tub had directed the explosion downwards but it would inevitably ricochet a little, and the sound echoed with furious intensity in his ears; spots were left in his eyes with the flash of the fire, and there was a rattling sound from the bullets exploding like popcorn inside the tub.

Eventually, the ricocheting sound ended.

"-over?" Seneca's voice gradually swam into his voice. "I can't even make out what happened."

Lexus opened his eyes and rubbed at them. He frowned into the light.

It took him a moment to realise that what he thought were spots in his eyes was actually the light emanating from in front of them. A ten-inch hole had been widened to a meter in the rubble.

Lexus laughed. Seneca half-laughed and half-winced in pain.

Together, slowly, balancing and supporting each other, they stumbled towards the widened hole; Lexus helped Seneca painfully get through the rubble-filled cavity before copying him, sliding down the light-drenched pile of rubble on the other side.

Lexus supposed it was just his and Seneca's luck that four kids with way too many swords had already found their way to the opening to the outside. It was just plain unfair that they all had their swords pointed at him and Seneca.

"Hey," he tried nervously. "Any of you kids want a cigarette or something?"

"Oh my god, Lexus."

* * *

 _You really think I'd kill off my baes Sexus before they got a chance to declare their undying love for each other, pretend they didn't, then try to sell confiscated cigarettes to the underage kids they stole them from? I never miss a trick, ladies and gents._

 _In any case this would've arrived sooner if my internet and my life loved me. I've been irritably limping to and fro from the router all day trying in vain to make it work. But yes. This happened. Next chapter Lexus and Seneca try their hand at cooking up meth in an RV and Lexus becomes Heisenberg or something._

 _I swear to god, I have actual handwritten sheafs of insightful, motif-filled, beautiful notes on this story and then I sit down and this happens._

 _As ever, thank you for reading this far._


	6. The Operant Condition

_With thanks to Technicolour Raincoat, MidnightRaven323, JadeRavenstone, L. Reginski and deathless . smile for your reviews of the last chapter._

* * *

 **THREE DAYS EARLIER**

 **RE-EDUCATION BUREAU**

* * *

 _He could hear Ganymede screaming- or was that him screaming? He could not tell. His hands were forced behind his back, handcuffed now- he felt a strip of tape cover his mouth and silence him. He gave way to his basest instincts and lashed out in all directions, but it was too little and too late._

 _The last thing Alec knew was a rough black bag covering his eyes, his nose, his mouth. An impact to the back of his head and the world went-_

-Something primal, deep within him, told him when he woke up to be quiet. _Stay down, stay silent, prey creature; predators are near._

Rough fabric scratched over his face as he shifted uncomfortably on the hard metal floor. The air filtering through the cloth was frustratingly warm, and saturated with more carbon dioxide than he was comfortable breathing- and with his mouth taped shut, he could only breathe through his nose. The fabric was loose across his face, pulled taut over the back of his head and came down to his neck, where it was fastened with some kind of belt. His wrists had been yanked behind him and crushed between his body and the metal ground, fastened together with handcuffs biting into his wrists. His ankles had been bound similarly.

Alec Taupe breathed shallowly through the black bag over his head and listened to the rattle of the truck hitting uneven roads, wincing as the hard suspension forced him up and down on top of his bound and painful hands.

What was this? Arrest? Fair, he wasn't sure how arrests really worked, but he had always been told by public information broadcasts that if you complied, offered up your wrists to the Peacekeepers, you'd be just fine.

So long as you hadn't broken the law.

Alec had known, all along, that his moment of charity to a District member, and later tribute, would be met with retribution. Perhaps on charges of smuggling, or helping Quint cheat in the Games; really, it could be blamed on anything the Capitol wished. But like this? He knew these weren't Peacekeepers. What had just happened to him was unmistakeable.

Capitol citizens lived a life of relative comfort and entertainment, with a single caveat; don't upset the system. This rule was warned and repeated, over and over, from school to adulthood, and while retribution was never publicly mentioned the stories were all the same.

If you broke the law; and _really_ broke it; the Peacekeepers were not the ones that would arrive. The Capitol Guard, dressed in imperial black rather than Peacekeeper white, would arrive in the dead of night, black-bag you, and you would not face a fine, nor death; you were taken to the re-education bureau.

And while that bureau was never publicly discussed, whispers were exchanged in the dead of night.

The stories were ingrained in every Capitolian, the fears that sustained their desperation for distraction.

Better a tribute than them.

And he had ignored every warning and chosen instead to be kind; and where had that charity brought him? The floor of a truck, bound and bagged, being brought for re-education.

Re-education. He shivered minutely, unable to control himself. The words sounded tame, even mundane. They meant so much more.

The truck juddered to a halt. The engine stopped. Alec held his breath a moment and listened for motion.

The first clue he got of motion was of, behind him, a truck door swinging open. Feet crashing on gravel, and now he was being pulled from the truck, forced to stand upright and walk. The air was considerably cooler; he had blacked out multiple times in the truck, but it was clear to him now that the time must have been close to dawn.

And, more horrifying, he couldn't hear the city. Even on the Waterfront of the Capitol, the sound of carriages on monorails and buzzing people and loudspeakers declaring government broadcasts were never quiet; the only time of quiet would be, perhaps, occasional and carefully chaperoned holidays to past arenas, which Alec did little of.

But even then, there was a hum of electricity, a buzz of life. Tonight, there was the rustle of the bag at his ears, the whistling of mockingjays, and the crunch of the gravel beneath his feet.

Gravel gave way to paving, and then a faintly sticky linoleum. Alec was forced to stop by the hands on his shoulders that had not ceased holding him throughout his escort. He felt the belt loosen around his neck, and now he cowered into the overwhelming fluorescent lights and the vague outline of a person in a huge chair, elevated on a platform as a judge would be.

"Alexander Taupe," intoned the authoritative voice, "You have been charged of conspiracy to smuggle goods. Do you refute the charges?"

He tried to muffle out a response but could not articulate beneath the duct tape.

"Let the record reflect the charges have not been refuted. Alexander Taupe, you have been trialled by the Capitol and found guilty of conspiracy to smuggle goods into the Districts. You are sentenced to re-education. Henceforth your name is no longer your birthright; your titles and deeds have been relinquished to the Capitol, as has your right to the Capitolian Freedom Act of ADD1. Do you appeal?"

Alec had been desperately appealing throughout beneath the duct tape, but with his hands and legs tied he had no means of getting it off. He started to try and yell, but the duct tape wound around his head had been done so too tightly to permit this.

The judge almost seemed to chuckle. Alec could make out part of her form now; instead of wearing the robes of a judge, he realised, she wore the garb of a member of the Capitol Guard, black but for a bronze eagle on the lapel.

"Let the record reflect no appeal was lodged. Alexander Taupe is now the legal property of the Capitol, and re-education bureau designated asset number..." She held up a tablet. "Huh. Number 144,000. Looks like we have a milestone, boys." She seemed entirely disinterested in Alec's desperate muffled screams beneath the duct tape muting him. "Okay, we're done here. Take him to the education chamber."

His eyes had adjusted now, and he saw with awful clarity as he was half-escorted and half-pushed from the room to a corridor. He started to drag his feet, unwilling to move, unwilling to go towards what he knew lay behind the doors of the education chamber. One of the Capitol Guards growled in frustration.

"There's always one." His face was vaguely familiar; Alec seemed to remember it attached to some patron of his bar a week ago. It was horribly likely.

"Prob'ly some kinda rebel type," a clearly District 2 accent added in. "I think he needs being taught a little quicker."

The first punch winded him. The second broke a rib, and he screamed, collapsing to the ground.

" _Get up._ " The Capitolian voice snapped.

Alec moaned on the ground. The District 2 guard sighed.

"Man, sometimes I wonder what they taught you guys to make half of you so soft."

"What did you just say about me?" The Capitol guard growled. Alec wailed beneath the duct tape as he saw the guard lash out, and a metal-soled bolt slammed into his stomach. Alec moaned helplessly, curling into a ball in a half-hearted attempt at saving himself from further harm.

"Dude, relax, I didn't mean _you_ were soft," the District guard consoled. "No need to prove your worth or whatever, I've seen you bench-pressing shit, I'm not questioning you're tough, man."

"Better not be." The Capitol guard kicked Alec in the back, a little less passionately but with no less strength. "Come on, 144K, _get up._ "

Knowing the next kick would be more brutal than the last, Alec tried to scramble up in compliance, but the District guard intervened and kicked out at Alec's face as he sat up. Alec was knocked backwards by the impact, feeling blood rush down his face from his nose. He moaned in pain and confusion.

"Hey, now his face matches his hair dye," the District guard commented with a laugh. The Capitolian joined in with the laughing as Alec felt the first of the tears burning in his face.

"A-a-ah, I think it's sinking in for little 144K here, wouldn't you say?" The Capitolian enunciated cruelly as he leaned in to inspect Alec, curled in a ball, covered in blood and crying with pain and fear. "See, you're ours now. And if you want us to stop kicking you, you have to do as we say, get it?"

Alec tried to scream obscenities at them but it was lost under the duct tape; it was futile and upsetting to be so powerless.

"Okay, let's try this again. _Get up._ "

Alec, this time, decided to exercise what power he could. He lay still in the huddle he had created for himself; he wasn't obeying just to be subjected to more pain.

One of the guards sighed; they were starting to blur together in Alec's vision and perception of events. "He really wants to get to that education chamber, doesn't he?"

"And if only you'd complied, 144K. You could have had a lot less pain if you had just _complied_." The words were cruelly spoken, given that compliance and defiance alike seemed to be bringing the same punishment, and the unfairness of his situation hurt Alec almost as much as the kicks.

Roughly, he was forced to his feet; Alec could see that he was trailing blood down his pristine silk shirt, and dripping it on the floor.

The smell of disinfectant hanging in the corridor's air promised the blood would not be the first.

* * *

He was roughly pushed into a plastic-covered medical chair, uncuffed but strapped to the chair before he could lash out with any force. His head was restrained onto the chair. For the first time, a hand came to unwrap the duct tape on his mouth, and he let them do it until it came to the final centimeter of tape, and then he turned as much as the head restraint let him and bit down hard on the hand with his newly freed jaw.

The punch to loosen his hold was expected, but it hurt all the same.

However, he hadn't expected the needle in his neck coming from the other side, and his vision tipped; his head became lighter. He fought the feeling but it was hard to- he felt like he was being filled with helium and it was shorting out his brain. The anaesthetic surged through his bloodstream and now his whole body tingled and started to lose feeling. He frowned vaguely, then sighed, and the darkness crept into his vision.

He let it.

* * *

The next time he woke up, the seat beneath him was no longer rubbery plastic, and the restraints were gone. He lay on what felt like cool concrete.

He sat up in confusion and immediately regretted it; his head swam and his eyesight darkened with the sudden rush of blood from his head. He lay back again, moaning softly.

Where he lay was nothing more than a bare concrete room, windowless and with a single steel door. He could feel the cold too sharply on the back of his head; he slowly brought up a hand to inspect his hair and, yes, it was no longer shoulder-length; it was half an inch long at most. Alec went to curse.

It came out as nothing speech-like at all.

He gasped with horrifying realisation and both hands went from his hair to his mouth. He sat up and this time didn't regard the dizzying feeling that accompanied it. He had hoped, he had really, really hoped, that re-education wasn't what everyone had whispered about it being.

Now panicking, unashamedly and unrestrictedly, Alec tried to scream.

But his vocal cords would not vibrate; he physically couldn't make a sound beyond breathing. He put a hand to his throat, inhaled, tried again.

Nothing.

They had cut his vocal cords.

 _The whispers were true,_ Alec thought as he sat in the concrete cell. _They were all true. Re-education is the Avox program._

The door opened behind him and he twisted painfully where he sat. The Capitolian Guard was back.

"Get up," he snapped.

Alec tried impulsively for a response but none could issue. He sat in fury and fear on the ground. They had done this to him. He would not comply.

The Capitol Guard in black and bronze tilted his head slightly.

 _Bang_. The crack of a bullet against concrete, embedded in the floor beside him, and Alec scrambled up in shock more than compliance. The Guard grabbed him by the shoulder and marched him out into the corridor, down to a stark tiled room with grates on the floor and a bare pipe coming out of the wall halfway up.

The Guard shoved him sharply towards the pipe, and for a moment Alec thought it was going to be another punishment when he noted that the pipe had a shower dial next to it.

Alec looked back at the Guard. He frowned. He tried to say 'I don't shower with people present', but after the first syllable refused to issue from his mouth he stopped. The Guard snorted, marched forward, and held his gun to Alec's head.

Alec stripped down hastily, staring at himself in the grimy mirror set into the corner of the room to distract himself from the gun at his head and the silence in his throat. Shorn of his hair and now his Capitol trappings, the silks and cottons he was used to for a lifetime, the only clue he had ever been a Capitolian was the barest hint of red dye at the tip of his half-inch hair, and the crimson tattoos marking his back.

The Guard stepped back, gun still ready but not at his head.

Alec paused, hand on the shower dial.

He didn't want this. He was a _Capitolian._ He had done nothing wrong, not really. He didn't want this. He _didn't_ -

The fear and denial in his veins told him to _run_ , run from the Guard and from himself, and he obeyed without thinking. He would show them. They could take his voice, his hair, his clothes, but you couldn't take the will of a Capitolian, never, never. Alec rushed past the Guard, pushed him aside, slammed against the door, grit his teeth against the pain and flung himself through it, flying down the corridor as fast as his pained body would permit.

The corridors were a maze and he couldn't- couldn't remember where he had gone, where was he going? Alec twisted and turned, afraid and alone, truly scared for the first time in his life.

He spun and ran down another corridor, before-

 _Wait_. Alec frowned. This looked familiar. Had he come back to the same corridor?

He turned and saw an open door, a tiled room. His blood ran cold. _Stupid, stupid, you've gone down the same-_

His thoughts turned electric and disappeared in smoke. His muscles contracted involuntarily and he went down to the ground, pain coursing through his injured chest.

In his peripheral vision as he blacked out he saw a Guard coming up to him.

* * *

When next he woke up, he was sitting up and in restraints. There were voices, soft and calm, behind him.

"-Just ran straight out," a low, male voice intoned; it sounded like a District 2 accent. "144k's fast, I'll give him that."

"That can be fixed," a female voice stated. Her voice was cool and calm; it did not resonate of any accent at all. The voice moved from behind him to beside him and Alec shut his eyes hastily. "Capitolians. They believe themselves so resolute, so unbreakable; the winners of a war." Even with his eyes shut, Alec could hear the smirk implied in the woman's tone. "They forget that we are the survivors."

A sharp crack and his injured chest was on fire. Alec jolted, his eyes wide open and betraying him, slamming bodily against his restraints; he tried to scream but nothing sounded except a sharp, prolonged exhalation. Impotent, voiceless. He was at the mercy of the woman holding the baton, who crossed now in front of him.

"Asset number 144,000," she stated calmly. Now she spoke more, it became clear that there was in fact the slightest accenting to her voice that her schooled tone could not hide; the stretching of her vowels, the clipped s, the drawled syllables. The clipped s was a Capitol accentuation, the extension of a word or vowel was an agricultural District tone; altogether, her voice was simultaneously unremarkable and distinctive.

It was a voice, he realised, he had heard before; just never attached to a face.

Anamaria Dimitri, Head of the Capitol Guard and the Peacekeeper Guild- the Panem Secretary of War, a title held even in their peacetime. She existed, every Capitol citizen knew that, she was often mentioned in official soundbites on the news. Who she actually was, on the other hand, had always been a mystery.

As it turned out, she was a woman in her mid-forties, austere and disciplined but with a flash of something far darker in her eyes. She wore the black and bronze of the Capitol Guard despite heading both that and the Peacekeeper's Guild; clearly, her loyalty lay with one more than the other. Her strangely accented voice, District and Capitolian and nameless all at the same time, began to speak again.

"Asset 144,000, you attempted to run, violating several Capitol laws in doing so. It appears you have not yet understood the parameters of your position, and must be subjected to the Intensive Procedure." She took a small piece of cloth, forcing it into a knot and then forcing that over his eyes as a crude blindfold. "Open your mouth."

He heard a soft 'shwing' of metal sharpening metal.

He bit his lip, shaking his head. A slam of leather-covered steel into his broken rib and he screamed silently through his nose, inhaling and exhaling rapidly but refusing to open his mouth, no, _no_ -

Metal sharpening against metal. A hand on his jaw. A cold, high voice, sharp as a Capitolian's and snarling as a District's and _enjoying_ this.

" _Open your-_ "

Meagre light filtered through his blindfold as behind him the door opened again.

"Commander Dimitri?"

The hand left his jaw and the voice lost its edge of sadistic enjoyment. "I'm busy, Lieutenant."

"I understand, ma'am, but the Border Guards have apprehended the escapee arena hovercraft. They're waiting on your order."

"Tell them-" she paused. Her tone seemed to mull her options with just a hint of the terrifying enjoyment that had brought Alec to still be inhaling and exhaling at a rate that couldn't sustain oxygen flow. "Actually, why not kill two birds with one stone? This doesn't happen every day. Tell them to apprehend but not charge; tell them I and the Elite Guard are on our way to their location. And I'm bringing asset 144k."

The Lieutenant's tone was confused. "Ma'am?"

"I don't typically get the opportunity to break in new assets, and frankly the Intensive Procedure is a little clinical for my tastes. This will work just as well."

"As you wish, Commander."

Alec frowned into his blindfold, realising he had bitten into his tongue slightly in pain and fear. He was still probing the blood in his mouth when a needle stuck in his neck again.

* * *

The next time he woke up he was strapped sitting upright again, but this time with more clothing, and more juddering around him. His blindfold was off, as he discovered when he opened his eyes; he found himself in what looked like the interior to a cargo plane, strapped to the fuselage next to some crates. A final clattering and a sink in his bruised stomach and the plane landed; a marching from the side and suddenly the straps on his arms were undone and he was being frog-marched to an opening cargo bay door.

Half-shoved through the opening Alec found himself in a strange place. For someone who had grown up and lived his entire life surrounded by a single city, to see a forest clearing was beyond the unusual. He could see no cities nearby; except, perhaps, a trickle of smoke a few miles to his west. A Kevlar-gloved hand gripped his arm to stop him running and he was marched to the side as twenty troops, headed by Anamaria Dimitri, walked to an edge of the clearing.

"Do not run," the Guard hissed in his ear. Alec had had enough of running; his wounded chest was telling him he was almost done with even walking. It was only the threat of retribution that kept him standing there.

On the edge of the clearing, the grass still flattened by the rotors that had landed on it, a hovercraft sat; a large one, the type used only by military and high-ranking government personnel. Alec didn't recognise it, but he recognised the people kneeling in lines, gags, and blindfolds beside the craft.

At the front, his arms tied behind him and his head held high, knelt what could only be the curly-haired Games Director of Communications, Josiah Lyman. He repeatedly tilted his head as if to try and follow the hushed conversations of the guards around him, and made muffled moans through the gag as if to try and appeal what was happening to him.

Alec knew now that the Guards did not care what Josiah wanted to say; nor that of the muffled cries of three hundred other people. Alec realised after a moment he knew them, not all by name but certainly many by face. It was the Gamemaking department, the administrative team of the arena.

And now all of them kneeled at the mercy of the people they had served.

"Administrative branch of the 76th Hunger Games," Anamaria announced to them in her high, cold voice after a brief conversation. The Guards began taking positions, marking themselves out in a parallel line facing the kneeling Capitolians. "You have been accused of high treason to the country of Panem and to the President, and of furthermore resisting arrest, upon the orders of Gamemaker Josiah Lyman and his traitorous allies, Lexus Valerian and Seneca Crane. Do you appeal the charges?"

Muffled screams beneath the gags; and they really, truly were screams. Josiah was trying to yell words, but most had long since abandoned reason for fear instead. Prolonged, muffled notes of fear, like an aria, swept over the dusk-lit clearing.

"Let the record reflect no appeal was lodged," Anamaria said with a cruel smile. She looked across at Alec, then, and made full eye contact with him.

She smiled.

And the unthinkable finally crossed his mind- what Anamaria was about to do. He opened his mouth and screamed at them to run but he was _powerless_ , he couldn't run to them when he could barely _stand_ and the Guard slammed his baton once again into Alec's broken chest, forcing him to collapse on his knees on the ground. The Capitol Guards began silently drawing their guns as they stood opposite the line of the former staff of the 76th Hunger Games.

"You have been trialled by the Capitol, and found guilty of your crimes," Dimitri said. "You have been sentenced to death."

A few, the cleverer or braver ones, Josiah Lyman included, tried to stagger to their feet and run despite the odds being against them. Anamaria was already barking orders.

" _READY-_ "

The Guards drew their machine guns and Anamaria drew her pistol, aiming it at Josiah Lyman's back.

" _-AIM-_ "

The guns were cocked with mechanical precision and now the entire crowd was trying to surge to its feet, run, but they had been corralled and they didn't know where to go-

"- _FIRE!_ "

An unholy clatter of bullets that made Alec's eyes water even more from where he knelt on the ground. _Bang- bang- bang- bang-_ went the bullets, hailing upon the crowd. Blood spattered here and there but mostly poured onto the grass as they hit the ground. Josiah Lyman, hit by a stray bullet or perhaps Anamaria's precise aim, crumpled on the ground like a puppet with his strings cut. The fleeing, muffled, blind people were cut down like wheat to a scythe, falling in bloodied heaps, choking on their own blood.

Silence came from the dead, just as it came from Alec's screaming. He collapsed on his knees, screaming and then coughing, spluttering, throwing up even though he had nothing to give but bile. The stench of blood weighed on his senses like a thick, wet blanket; he could taste the copper on his tongue.

Impotent, voiceless, he had watched a massacre of his own people and done nothing.

Something inside him snapped.

"Get up," came a voice, far away. Alec's mind was blank but for the taste and smell of blood. He started to stand up, only to feel a baton smash against his face and now the blood he could taste was his. He collapsed back on the grass.

"Get up." This time the pain told him to stop but he could barely heed it over his own guilt and terror. He struggled upwards; the baton hit him again and now the pain was overwhelming as he crumpled backwards on the grass.

This time, he knew the voice was Anamaria's; the snap and crack of her voice was unmistakeable. "Get up."

Two minutes ago, Alec would have refused. He would have struggled. His life as a Capitolian, a life privileged and shining, a life that had told him he was the winner of a war; that would have stopped him from obeying.

But two minutes had stripped him bare, finally, completely. He had stood and watched the destruction of his people and done nothing, and it had destroyed his last vestiges of pride.

He struggled, wobbling, onto his knees; then slowly, painfully, forced himself upright. He could not look Anamaria in the eye; his eyes cast naturally downwards at her feet. Her baton rested on his broken cheekbone like a caress, and he shivered but did not move.

"Good," she murmured. "Good."

She stepped back, admired her handiwork a moment, then barked an order.

"Avox 144,000. Get in the hovercraft."

He was not strapped down when he entered the hovercraft and sat back by the cargo.

They did not need to restrain him any longer.

* * *

 _Guess who, kids? That's right, it's screening, back with another of her on-time daily updates!_

 _Uh._

 _Okay, this is so late it borders on unacceptable. I had the majority of this done in a day! I was so ready to get this done! But then- myeh. I couldn't break the chapter beyond the Intensive Procedure, and I wrote about six different drafts before I realised I could kill two birds with one stone this chapter and reveal both the events of Alec's storyline and the fate of the arena hovercraft. I'm still not happy with it, but I'm so, so tired._ _Fun fact, though- I've plotted the next six chapters in detail, and I'm not busy hobbling around universities on my thrice-damned crutches, and so I finally have the time and health to start daily updates! Hooray!_

 _I apologise, though, new readers. I swear I'm usually more diligent than this, you've caught me on an off month._

 _IN ANY CASE. Next chapter I finally start introducing the new characters with the old! So be excited for tomorrow, kids!_

 _And as ever, thank you for reading this far._


	7. The Camera's Eye

_With thanks to deathless . smile, MidnightRaven323, ColMikeFuser and xQueen-Of-Applesx for your reviews of the last chapter._

* * *

 **THE CAPITOL**

 **PRESENT DAY**

* * *

Golden walls glistened in the morning light, iridescent and swirling, enigmatic as the coiling koi that swirled in the aquarium that made up one wall of his bedroom. Velarius' hair, gold-dyed as it was, picked up the glistening light as he shifted awake.

Blue eyes, bright enough to almost fade to pale as they hit the iris, surveyed his domain. The morning sunlight glittered off his palatial bedroom walls, gilded with gold leaf; the aquarium wall was resplendent with shimmering, scaled decoration.

And yet more shimmering decoration lay in his bed. He regarded the prone form of his most recent fling, wondering just how much surgery it had taken for her to reach modelling stardom. Her blonde hair was bright, but not quite as golden as his. He smirked and rose, stretching and padding to the bathroom.

Three mirrors lined the walls; the fourth was taken up with a huge, mosaic-tiled turquoise shower with solid gold taps. He regarded himself in the mirror.

Deep brown skin, freckled slightly on his cheeks. Silver tattoos of geometric patterning etched into his arms. Relatively tall, with a regal posture and a self-assured smile- and behind him, dark hair dyed golden, braided a thousand times over, the many tiny golden braids pulled back in a ponytail and puffed out in an erstatz halo behind his head. The mane to complete the lion.

He postured a moment more, then went to his shower, tapping a few buttons and then revelling in the scents of leather and spice that cascaded with the golden-tinted water.

Muffled in the shower came a ringing; he frowned, turning off the water. Yes, definitely a ringing; his doorbell was being rung.

Sighing, he made a motion to an Avox waiting in the corner of his bathroom.

"Door."

The Avox bowed slightly and left. He heard the door of his apartment click open a moment later.

Sighing irritably, he grabbed a golden towel and wrapped it around his waist before moving out of the bathoom himself, disregarding the stirring woman in his bed as he made his way to the living room.

Standing in his living room, dressed in a cobalt that made him stand out against the black and gold decor, Caesar Flickerman stood. A Capitol Guard stood slightly behind him at his side; another was quickly and methodically roaming the room, checking for any dangers before returning to his protectee's side.

"Velarius Eppoxe," Caesar said with his oil-slick voice. "It's a pleasure to see you. I trust you are well?" He raised a single sculpted eyebrow, regarding Velarius' bare chest and wet body.

Velarius hummed subtly to ensure his voice wouldn't crack from being used first thing in the morning, then returned the greeting himself in his low, gravelly tones.

"Caesar. I trust you are well yourself, although I am certain nobody could be in these troubled times. I hope you did not lose a loved one in the tragedy?"

"Many friends, many loves," Caesar said with a disinterested tone. They both knew neither of them cared about the dead arena operatives. Velarius had once worked with them, he knew many of them; but he didn't exactly mourn their loss, and neither did Caesar. This was the precursor to speech- the formalities they had to tread.

"So," Velarius said, accepting a coal-black shirt from an Avox and beginning to dress himself, "To what do I owe this great pleasure?"

He had always hated Caesar, ever since he had stolen the primetime hours upon becoming the new Master of Ceremonies.

"Can't old friends speak to each other?" Caesar said with a light tone and a twinkling eye.

Caesar hated him just as much, although he wasn't certain if it was simply because of the rumoured nature of Velarius' illegitimate birth, or because Velarius had once tried to quietly defame Caesar of the same.

"I'm certain that at this early hour you have more to discuss than a social call." Velarius slid on underwear and pants, now discarding the towel on the floor for the Avox to pick up and regarding the selection of waistcoats that another Avox held out for him.

"Regrettably, dear friend, I do," Caesar said, pacing the room slowly and observing the decoration with feigned interest. "I trust you heard of the departure of Head Gamemaker Crane?"

"The Capitol traitor, yes I did."

They both knew he was innocent, but innocence doesn't mean anything when you're dead.

"The President has named his successor." Caesar drew himself up subtly; a rare tell from the usually so carefully composed man. "He has named me."

Velarius controlled his urge to stride over and tear the smug smirk from Caesar's face.

"Well, congratulations to you, my friend," Velarius said with his low tones and a toothy smile. "Have you made plans for your inaugural Games, steeped as they are in uncertainty?"

What Velarius meant, if one such as Caesar was to listen, was that even if Caesar didn't take the bait and feed him information he could drop in his show, he dearly hoped Caesar's first Game would end as catastrophically as the last.

Caesar smiled his oil-slick smile.

"I have a few, my dear Velarius. But that's not why I'm here."

"Then why _are_ you here, Caesar?" Velarius let a little of his frustration slip as he drew on a shimmering golden waistcoat with smoked pearl buttons. It was far too early in the morning to play these games with Caesar Flickerman.

"I'm naming _my_ successor."

Velarius blinked. It was a rare tell for him, too, but he wasn't typically taken unawares.

"You're naming me?" His purring tones became a surprised growl.

Caesar's mask dropped, just a little, just enough for Velarius to see a serious man beneath the smile. "Behind only me, you're the prime talk show host in Panem. Your show gets not inconsiderable ratings. The Capitol watches you. We haven't always seen eye to eye, but this is about entertainment and not friendship."

"Well, I'm flattered." Velarius had regained his composure by now, but he was still markedly shocked on the inside. Caesar's mask had dropped almost completely now, and even beneath the powder and dye and wigs he seemed entirely unlike his typical persona.

"I'm not fucking around, Eppoxe. I don't need a puppet right now, not with the Capitol this tense. I need someone who can actually put two sentences together without slurring them, and that's you."

Velarius dropped a little of his own easygoing persona in turn, straightening and tilting his head upwards in a regal stance. "I can be relied upon."

"See that you are." A threat, a real threat from Caesar Flickerman, reninded Velarius of just how much administrative and Presidential power Caesar now held; they were no longer equals in the game of shadows they excelled at.

Finally, after a long moment of tense silence, Caesar cleared his throat slightly and stepped back, drawing up the entertainer's persona with a slight flourish of his hand.

"Velarius Eppoxe, I name you the Master of Ceremonies. Herein you relinquish all titles beside; you work for the President and the President alone." Caesar quirked a dark smile. "Unless I feel like telling you to do something, of course. Will you accept?"

Velarius put on his obsidian suit jacket, lined with gold.

He smiled.

"I serve at the pleasure of the President."

* * *

"So you think you've figured it out?"

Quint winced at the strange feeling of standing and not, leaning a little more heavily on his slim metal cane.

"It's- complicated."

The prosthetic Salvia Kim had given him was far more advanced than the temporary one he had been given. The woven carbon-fibre that encased his leg gave way to an inclined metal 'blade' at the end. The whole thing was rigged up with relays that connected his nerve endings with the machine, so if he flexed his leg as he typically would, concentrating on the motion he was trying to make, the prosthetic moved accordingly. But the technology required his concerted attention to work, and trying to both look where he was going and control the prosthetic was nigh-impossible.

"I'd give you more time if I could," Salvia sighed, "But your interview's in an hour and we have to get you to makeup. Are you gonna be okay?"

The words were so far outside Quint's normal perception that they bordered on ridiculous. "Yes," he murmured, too tired and confused to answer any other way than automatically.

"Then good luck," Salvia said, stepping back and, after a moment's consideration, performing an odd motion in which she bent over, just slightly, casting her eyes to the ground, before she swept from the room.

It took Quint a moment to place the odd motion; he realised he had seen the other Avox do it, and Capitolians in certain moments of formality. It was a bow; it represented respect, a deferrence to the other.

Quint could barely grasp the concept of a Capitolian bowing to a District citizen, even if that citizen was a Victor. He shifted uncomfortably, moving his weight back and forth from his prosthetic to his cane.

Slowly, painfully, he left the room in the maze of the Training Centre as well and began to make his way across the corridor to the stylists' prep room.

" _Barkwater_!"

The sudden whisper made Quint jump, and the jump made Quint wince in pain. Slowly, concentrating hard on the movement of his prosthetic, he turned to regard his addresser.

An old man stood in the doorway to a room. He was short, greying and balding, with a hand on a far less extravagant cane; but he stood tall despite it, and his brown eyes glittered with barely restrained intelligence.

Quint knew the man. Rufus Warnke, a Victor from long, long ago; he might even have been alive in the Dark Days. He had been a constant in the Games since then; District Nine rarely won, but Rufus returned each year with a darker expression and sharper eyes, indomitable despite the death around him.

He stood in the doorway, eyes flashing with something urgent.

"-Warnke," Quint responded uncertainly in turn.

Rufus' eyes glinted as they flicked to a security camera only a metre away from them. "Act like you're happy to see me, then hug me."

Quint, confused, smiled in a strained manner and tentatively embraced the older man.

Rufus' lips tickled Quint's ear as he whispered urgently. "We need to talk about what happened in the arena. Tonight, upstairs, District Nine apartments. You and your friends have started something big and Caesar's about to change the game."

Rufus pulled back, awkwardly but determinedly clapping Quint on the shoulder. Quint did not respond; his blood had run cold.

"I'll see you around," Rufus said awkwardly. He disappeared back into his room, slamming the door shut.

Quint stared at the closed door a second.

All he could do now to alleviate his ice-cold blood was try to slowly walk to the prep room.

* * *

Words, Rufus' words, flowed through Quint's head as he sat watching the television screen backstage. The screen showed the last preparations being made to a set; a comfortable armchair for Caesar and a plush throne for him, the Victor, the false Victor in a false Games. Quint pulled at his suit irritably. The stylists had said his rumpled brown hair and his grey eyes would perfectly suit a cobalt blue; but having seen Caesar pacing in and out of shot of the camera's view, Quint wasn't so sure the shade hadn't been picked out to match Caesar instead. The Master of Ceremonies seemed stressed, if only slightly; his eyes were hard and cold, his lips pursed to a line as he paced and stared at a sheaf of papers, occasionally mouthing lines from it with exaggerated flourish.

Quint hated being on the camera. He had been nothing less than sullen during the interview process, despite Caesar's best efforts to enthuse him during the event, and spending four hours reacting to his own actions and his friends' agony held even less joy for him. Especially in this suit. Quint pulled at the shirt cuffs again, shimmering as they were in a metallic blue. He was used to work clothes and casual wear; to be decked out in a Capitoliate's garb looked as odd to him as it did to them.

A klaxon blared and Caesar stopped pacing. He discarded the papers as the set team stopped moving, walked calmly back to a marker in tape on the ground, then schooled his face and waited.

The curtains in front opened and Quint watched Caesar's smile extend into a perfect toothed grin.

"Hello, dear Capitol!" He crooned. "It's a pleasure to be with you again." His face then fell dramatically, almost ridiculously, into a perfect picture of agony. "But in such circumstances. The tragedy at the arena cost us many lives; many people that we loved, that loved us. We will miss them, forever and always. The 327 dead at the arena, tributes included, shall never be forgotten."

Even from his place backstage, Quint could hear moans and sobs from the audience; real ones, honest ones, brought from the depths of their soul.

"But." Caesar's smile returned, wan but perfect still. "I can now reveal to you, Capitol citizens- someone has survived. Against all odds, a tribute survived; a single one. And they're here now, the Victor, to revel in life in the Capitol- Quint Barkwater!"

Quint had never expected to hear cheers to his name, and never cheers like this. At first there was a confused silence as the audience took in what Caesar was saying; and then there was rapture, and applause, and a kind of desperation to the cheers that Quint had never heard before. At first he didn't understand it but then he did- the Capitol, mourning for the first time, had been faced with a link to their dead, a survivor from the ashes, to console them.

He just wished it didn't have to be him.

An aide pushed him and he went to the stage awkwardly, stepping slowly and painfully into the light. Caesar went to meet him as he struggled across the stage, magnanimously and subtly pretending to help him to his seat. Quint collapsed on his ample throne and Caesar retired to his armchair, and the desperate applause finally died down.

"So, Quint," Caesar said in soft tones, "How are you feeling?"

 _Feeling. Caesar just had to start with a hard question, didn't he?_

"Tired," Quint answered, an automatic response with little emotion behind it. Caesar laughed a little, politely.

"Of course you are, Quint; you've been through such an ordeal, you must be exhausted! I understand the unfortunate dome collapse after the weapons malfunction crushed your leg?"

An excuse he'd have to go along with, bitter as it tasted in his mouth. Quint nodded slowly, glancing down at the flat metal that replaced his foot. The cameras and Capitolians followed, and a sigh of sympathy rose on the air that Caesar caught expertly.

"But it looks like you've been patched up!" Caesar said with a warm smile.

"Yes," Quint said slowly; he glanced at the cameras, and Snow's promise of retribution hit home. "Thanks to the generosity of the Capitol," he continued hastily. The words sounded stilted even to his ears, but the audience lapped it up obligingly and Caesar went along with the words with a nod.

"It's the least we could do for our esteemed Victor, Quint," Caesar said, injecting a little more frantic energy into his tone now that the deaths of hundreds had been disposed of as a topic entirely. "But I'm afraid that even we can't help with everything." His tone turned, if it was even possible, even sadder than before. "I'm sorry, Quint."

Quint frowned. "About what?" Surely they couldn't be asking him to mourn for Seneca Crane? And they, certainly, couldn't be mourning for his allies?

"Your grandfather's death."

Quint's mouth went dry. " _What_?"

"It must have been a shock," Caesar prompted kindly. It was all Quint could do to respond.

"I- yes," he gasped, eyes wide. "He's-?"

"It's always a shame when relatives pass away," Caesar continued. "But he would have been proud, I'm sure, to see you win."

Quint opened his mouth to speak, and instead sobbed. He clapped both hands over his mouth in horror, but it was too late to stop himself; his breathing had become rapid and shaky, his eyes welling with horrified tears. Here? Two days awake, and here was where they told him? His grandfather, the man that had raised him, was dead, probably from _starvation_ without Quint to help him, and they left Snow's propaganda lapdog to tell him that his Capitol-hating grandfather would have been _proud_ to see him in the clutches of the enemy? How could they? _How could they?!_

To his anger and horror another sob wrenched from his throat, and he looked with sheer fury at the cameras. He never, ever showed weakness, especially not in front of people, and to do this to him now had destroyed a little more of his own agency. And they knew that.

"There, there," Caesar consoled, and it was like fire on his skin to feel the Capitolian's hand soothing his shoulder. A handkerchief pressed into his hand and Quint abandoned what little sense of propriety he had tried to maintain to bury his face in it, trying to get himself under control again.

They would pay for this. For doing this to him, to his grandfather's memory; they would _pay_ for this.

He coughed to relieve the pressure in his throat, wiped his face and looked up again, as eerily calm as he had hoped to force himself to be, staring Caesar down and daring him to try anything.

Caesar nodded and the highlight reel began.

Every highlight show was edited with a different thematic in mind. Career victories played like war films, triumphant and heraldic in their storming a campaign of victory. Outlier victories played with a rags-to-riches image across their edit, the have-nots becoming the Victors of their Games. Quint's highlight show was edited for the revo alliance.

It was strange to see himself reaped, and stranger to see his allies reaped. Elizabeth's cold rage, Cesal's desperate volunteering, Theon's calculated fight to the front; each was so different, but in the end they had all fought together against the Capitol; except Quint knew that wasn't how the story would end in this narrative, despite it being the most important part.

While the other six tributes were given their moments of triumph throughout the narrative, it was Quint's that held the most sway in the edit. He watched himself run, and fight the mutts; he had to close his eyes as he once more heard the screams of Cesal Nesbin, felt the blood on his hands from stabbing him deep in the abdomen.

And then, the crackling of flame.

Quint watched as the President's mansion, set alight by Theon and Elizabeth, was once more burned to cinders. The words he and Glace had yelled to their saviours were edited out, but besides that much of the mansion fire had been kept in; the mutts, the scaling of the walls, and Elizabeth tying Quint to herself and abseiling from the wall as the last camera went dark.

From there, Quint remembered little of the highlight show other than he was too tired of everything to do something so exhausting as comment. Caesar was forced to wrap up the show awkwardly, and Quint stood as the cameras went dark and the curtains closed.

"I'm sorry for your loss," Caesar said. His smile was an oil slick, iridescent and toxic.

"You're not," Quint said. It was all he needed to say. He did not bother to check Caesar's expression as he left; whether he was in trouble or not.

He did not care anymore.

* * *

When he entered the elevator to the Training Center, for once and miraculously without guards, Quint pressed the button labelled '9'.

* * *

 _And the first of the new gang has arrived! Thanks again to deathless . smile for your submission of Velarius Eppoxe, that fancy dangerous tv show host baby with the shiny hair. It's not the last we're gonna see of him, that much is for sure._

 _Next chapter I reveal my Ivaylo analogue character and what this sequel's really gonna be about, although if you wikipedia Ivaylo that's pretty much as informative as I am._

 _As ever, thank you for reading this far._


	8. Soapbox Rebellion

_With thanks to Glassgift, MidnightRaven323, deathless . smile and JadeRavenstone for your reviews of the last chapter._

* * *

 **Y184-09-06 T 22** **:18:29**

 **THE CAPITOL**

* * *

At least one Capitol news outlet always wanted his take on the Victor each year; not so much because of his expertise but because the name 'Rufus Warnke' was a known quantity to the people of the Capitol. This year he had been press-ganged into Cherry Haven's interview process, which was frenetic to say the least.

The Capitol gossip-mongerer had taken control of one of the rooms in the Creation Center in Headquarters Square, and not-so-politely insisted upon Rufus' joining her, which had been backed up by a plainclothed Peacekeeper guarding him. Security was on high alert since the 'accident'.

Rufus pulled at the cuffs of his ill-fitting suit, the shirt of which was chafing at his barely-healed injuries; Cherry sat primly in her glittering chin-to-ankle dress, her headdress of feathers fluttering precariously above her.

"So, Rufus," Cherry simpered, impatiently waving away an Avox with a tray of drinks, "How is it to have another outlier Victor? It's been a little while since your type won."

Rufus resisted the urge to call out the sheer inaccuracy and indecorum of taking every single District that wasn't militarised for victory and calling them 'your type'. He was from District 9 and Quint from District 6; transport and agriculture were so far apart it beggared belief that Cherry could believe them similar.

But he couldn't say any of that.

"Great," he said gruffly. Cherry blinked at the abrupt reply, and changed tack, her abrasive tone softening and wavering slightly.

"And, ah, what do you think of the great tragedy that befell our nation this week?"

 _Oh, come on_. What did she want him to say? That he had lived in the Dark Days and seen far, far worse? That he had lived in District 9 in both war and peacetime, and seen children dying of starvation despite tending endless fields of golden grain? That he had been the last crowned by President Sanchez and had watched President Snow bloodily emerge and retcon history? That only days ago, that same President had tortured him for information? Did she expect him to mourn for the people that had enslaved him?

But he couldn't say any of that.

"It's terrible," he growled. Cherry, now both unsettled and without an interview fit to put in print, aggressively waved over the Avox with the drinks tray.

She didn't quite get to drain her alcohol, however, before the doors opened. Two Capitol Guards held open the french doors while a man walked through the middle.

Rufus had never been active in Capitol politics, but even he could recognise the Secretary of Communications when he saw him.

"Mr Heavensbee," Cherry began in shock, but he waved a hand impatiently.

"You'll have an exclusive with me when you drop that lead you're chasing on the Head Gamemaker's replacement," Plutarch intoned. "Until then, we need the room."

Cherry left the room with an impetuous swish, while Rufus stood slowly on his bulky cane to leave. Plutarch raised a hand.

"Ah-ah; we're here to talk to you, Mr Warnke. Well; I say we. _I'm_ here to talk to you."

Rufus glanced to the two Capitol Guards that now stood in front of the french doors. "About what?"

"Standard procedure; we're making sure all of the Victors are up to speed on media procedure following the tragedy." Plutarch turned to his two bodyguards. "Guys, this man's eighty and we're in Games Headquarters; I think I'm pretty safe. Take half an hour, would you?"

"We have to keep an eye on you at all times, sir," one of the Guards replied hesitantly.

"Darien, you've kept an eye on me nonstop for twelve hours now. Don't you have a girlfriend to call in on or something?"

The Guard shuffled slightly.

"Due respect, sir, I just ejected her from the room."

The other Guard stifled a smirk. Plutarch sighed.

"Then go over and apologise to her. But if she asks I am serious on the lead thing, she needs to drop that. Ellaria, stop grinning or I'm rescinding my offer. Seriously, both of you go do _something_ for half an hour. You guys are stifling me."

"Yes, sir," the Guards said in unison, saluting with perfect synchronicity before leaving the room, clicking the doors carefully shut behind them before walking down the corridors. Plutarch watched them leave before heaving a huge sigh.

"I swear, trying to get them off their guard is harder than it should be, considering I'm technically their boss." He turned to face Rufus, gesturing quickly to the desk and chairs. "Sit, sit, no need to stand on my account."

Confused and suspicious but grateful to no longer have to lean on his cane, Rufus sat again; Plutarch sat opposite him, leaning his forearms on the desk.

"Rufus Warnke. Victor of the 14th Hunger Games," he said thoughtfully. "You're a clever guy, I hear. The President tells me that despite your background you still play chess brilliantly."

This tonal shift from Cherry's condescension to Plutarch's praise was nothing if not suspicious. Rufus frowned, opting to continue his own policy of response.

"-Thanks." His tone was gruff and quiet. Plutarch seemed to pick up on the implied suspicion, smiling in response.

"Rufus, _Rufus_ ; you don't need to be so on guard. I'm not here to interrogate you." Plutarch winced, just slightly, as he took in the dark shadows beneath Rufus' eyes. "I hear Anamaria Dimitri did enough in that regard."

Rufus tightened his grip on his heavy wooden cane a little. "Then why are you here, Heavensbee? 'Cause, ya know, I have a District to get back to."

Plutarch laughed lowly. His nose looked a little squashed and scarred, as if it had been recently broken, and his eyes were shadowed with sleeplessness instead of pain.

"Rufus, I swear, before we begin I have to explain this- I'm not here to interrogate you, or threaten you, or anything. I wanted to talk."

"About?"

Plutarch glanced over his shoulder a moment. He leant further across the desk.

"I sent the Guards out for a reason, Warnke. No cameras or microphones are set up in this building for security reasons; it's one of the few in the Capitol. In this place and in this place alone we are entirely secure, but to be safe keep your voice down across the duration of this meeting."

Something in Plutarch's tone did not ring of any other Capitol politician he had met over the decades. The slippery, assured tones of a statesman had slipped to something fearful, something urgent- something he could recognise as human. It chilled him.

"The hell are you talking about?" He hissed, his reluctant tones shifting to a defensive cadence.

"What I'm about to divulge is partially from the highest echelons of national security, and partially so devastating to my own reputation I could be potentially executed for treason," Plutarch said, his voice low and guarded. "The arena was destroyed on the orders of the President after a group of tributes attempted to escape and the arena staff simultaneously aided them and attempted to escape themselves. They were all killed, all of them. This wasn't a tragedy. This was _execution_."

Rufus had known from the start nothing this huge could have been an accident, but to hear the Capitol staff had been killed too; and to hear it so baldly from the mouth of someone so senior in the Panem government was terrifying.

And now he was potentially culpable.

"The hell do you need to tell me for?"

"Rufus," Plutarch said," You're a clever guy. You think a bunch of kids can escape the watch of three hundred Capitolians without a little help?"

Rufus blinked.

"You helped them."

"I- aided." Plutarch hummed, glancing back at the primarily windowed wall and doors behind them. "I'm not all that certain any of them survived beyond the one the Guard recovered, but it doesn't matter now. I'm going to make this brief. The Capitol's mourning but the Districts are _revolting_. In media it's been kept quiet but at your home it's a mess. Districts Six, Seven and Eight especially are starting to roil with unrest; nothing large, not yet, but your people are suspicious of the Capitol and we've been relaxing security for so long that they've had enough room for sporadic revo action."

"Riots?" Rufus asked, unable to stop himself.

"Not yet; it's been guerrilla forces, some arson attacks, a few graffiti attacks. But the unrest, if-"

Plutarch cut himself off, regarding Rufus thoughtfully.

"Let's put it this way. You're a clever man, Rufus, am I correct? You won your Games from cunning and not force."

"-Yeah?"

"No, seriously, Rufus, talk to me here, I'm risking my life talking about this. You're a clever man. You're _cunning_. You've survived this long and you live in District 9, a District that's not only exceptionally close to Seven, Six and Eight but in its own right reeling after the actions of your deceased female tribute in the Games. If you spoke to the people of District 9, _would they listen to you?"_

For the first time, the whole thing clicked into place.

Plutarch had pushed the tributes into rebellion, into burning down the President's mansion and escaping; because he was trying to incite rebellion. Why was another matter, but Rufus could hazard a few guesses. The Capitol Plutarch could influence himself, but he couldn't specifically target the Districts; not without help.

Plutarch wanted him to start a full-scale rebellion, Capitol and District alike, the whole of Panem revolting against its government.

Eighty years of oppressed anger and ambition bubbled to the surface in Rufus' heart.

He smiled.

* * *

Plutarch set out a few guidelines of what he needed, hasty and verbal. From now on, for what they were about to attempt, nothing could be placed in writing. Rufus, in turn, had placed his own guidelines in place, and they had shared what they knew.

Plutarch had lost the Head Gamemaker slot, which he had been eyeing (Rufus reckoned his miraculous escape while the Head Gamemaker died hadn't been so much guesswork as strategy); it had gone unexpectedly to Caesar Flickerman instead. But Plutarch reckoned they could work with that for the year upcoming. He had a lot of funds and arms to transfer in the next year, and a lot of public opinion in the Capitol to sway. He had a man lined up for that job, he said; leave that to him.

Rufus' job, meanwhile, was far more broad and far less simple. Using his authority as a Victor he was going to try and sway the people of District 9 to a state of riot, and attempt to sway the districts nearby to follow. Districts Six and Twelve were the priority, with Eight and Seven if possible as well. Plutarch had been more enamoured with Seven's extensive revo alliance, but Rufus had insisted that as a strategic zone and as a focal point of unrest Twelve was infinitely more useful. Besides, he knew a Victor in District Twelve that could be useful.

In fact, Victors were the key. In order to mobilise their plan, the Games were the key to it all. What happened beyond the Games in a year's time was more shaky, but Plutarch promised to meet up and discuss details at another time. The Capitol Guards were returning and they had a rebellion to subtly begin, two men against the world.

Rufus returned to the Training Center and quietly tracked down Victors, one by one. Quint was the last he found, but the youngest and easiest to garner trust from. He had liked the kid from what he had seen; and if their plan was to work, his District was focal to it.

Plutarch had made sure the elevators were free from guards. The rest was up to Rufus.

* * *

In all, of the Victors he had spoken to, seven actually arrived; and not the ones he expected.

Nobody else from District 6 apart from Quint showed, but that wasn't a major setback, because the other Victors from District 6 were now all morphling addicts that wouldn't have much of themselves left even if they went sober. In fact, to have Quint Barkwater was a major upside, despite his apparent emotional distress at the present time. They needed District 6 above almost all others.

However, soon after, from District 7 arrived Johanna Mason, her dark eyes glinting in the low light of the District 9 apartment as she made her way to the empty dining table with a casual air that was fake. Rufus knew she actively disliked the Capitol, but if she sided with the active revo groups in her District she had never made known. To see her here was a surprise, albeit a fairly welcome one. Still, Rufus had gotten an Avox to remove all knives from the dining table before she arrived; he had seen her work with an axe on TV.

A far bigger shock was the man that walked in five minutes later, his typically unfocused eyes sobered and pained, his unkempt look for once cleaned and kept. Haymitch Abernathy was a clever man when he wasn't looking down a bottle, but he was unpredictable, as many from District Twelve were. To see him here was a surprise; to see him followed by Chaff from District Eleven, who had always avoided any conflict other than card games with Rufus and Haymitch, was actively a shock.

Quietly the elevator doors slid open again and in walked another, short-statured and slightly hunched but with a subtly intelligent expression and eyes that took in more than they revealed. Beetee Latier was not someone who involved himself in conflict; indeed, he had designed many systems by his own admission for the Capitol's use. Still, if loyal, he could be useful.

Rufus had considered this the end of the grouping and had begun to speak when the elevator doors opened a final time and two more people walked through the door. Rufus frowned and squinted through the relatively bright light inside the elevator to see who was walking through.

His warm smile came almost without thought; not so much for the tall man, but for the diminutive woman beside him.

The Victor of the Games before him, a friend for many years, Mags Ancera from District 4 walked slowly but firmly to the table and sat. Finnick Odair, tall and young and with his hand held out close to Mags in case she fell, sat beside her.

Two Victors from District Four, one Victor from Eleven; one from Twelve, from Three and from Six and Seven and from Nine.

In this way was the stage set for a rebellion.

"Evening," Rufus greeted informally. "I know you're all wondering what this is all about. I'm actually surprised this many of you turned up."

"Well, promise free booze and I'm here," Haymitch quipped without humour. "What is this, Rufus?"

Rufus inclined his head slightly to an Avox, who turned up the lighting and began to set the table. Dishes were placed on the table, and on Rufus' second motion of his head the Avox stood to the side.

"There are six cameras in this room, as far as I can tell no microphones," Rufus said, "But keep your voices down anyway. As far as the cameras are gonna see, and as far as anyone is gonna know unless one of you says something otherwise, this is a celebration for Quint's victory. Everyone take some food and at least pretend to eat it."

Dutifully they filled up their plates. Haymitch, his eyes sharp and alert for once, kept his gaze with interest on Rufus. He swirled his fork around his plate, spearing a piece of chicken.

"So what is this really?"

Rufus regarded the table's inhabitants. "A meeting about the arena's destruction."

"The Capitol said it was an accident." Beetee's clever eyes dared Rufus to say otherwise. Quint shifted awkwardly in his seat.

"Not even the Capitolians dead were an accident." Rufus' voice was low and quiet. "And while the people here are too busy checking their own reflection to notice, the people at home have noticed all too well what the seven in the arena were trying to do." The eyes of the table moved to Quint, who blinked in shock.

"Are you saying-" his voice trailed off a moment when he shifted, his face pinched with pain, before he continued. "-Are you saying that something's happening in the Districts because of us?" He looked down to his hands and up at the group, frowning slightly. "I didn't even realise they'd show our escape on television."

"Parts, not all of it," Chaff said. "Enough to know what was happening, what you were attempting. You kids were brave."

Quint seemed disinterested in taking any kind of compliment related to the matter. He turned his attention back to Rufus.

"So what _are_ you saying?"

"I'm saying that when your friends set fire to the Presidential mansion, and you all trooped off to climb the Capitol to the top, you showed us that it wasn't quite so omnipotent after all," Rufus said, "And the Districts are responding, violently and suddenly. Johanna, your district especially."

Johanna lazily swirled her fork in the air. "The revos are always complaining, Warnke. They always back down before they actually take any action- they can't even find their keys in a week, let alone mobilise like you're saying."

"Look again, Johanna- apparently they've found 'em." Rufus looked around at the table. "Guys, for the first time in seventy six years, Quint and his revo alliance has given us a chance for something. The Capitol's unsteady and mourning and ready for taking. The Districts are struggling to take just one cover-up too many. This is our chance. This is a _window of opportunity,_ with a weakening President and a weakened Capitol and Districts that because of the 76th Games have for once seen the potential for allying instead of tearing each other apart. We have a _window of opportunity,_ and before the last of us forget what rebellion tasted like we need to strike. Now, I have a plan, but it needs you. All of you. For the sake of the people who we lost, and the people left behind. We need to band together." Rufus exhaled and inhaled sharply; he was unused to speaking so much, but frankly he was enjoying it. "So; will you join me?"

The table sat in silence then, exhanging glances between each other and the eternal cameras that watched them.

Quietly, solemnly, Mags raised her hand to her face, a napkin held in her hand so her fingers were still visible to them but not the camera. Her little finger was bent down. She kissed her three fingers through the napkin, before tapping the napkin and her fingers to the table and releasing it again.

It was the traditional salute of respect, concealed well from the cameras. It was used more in District Nine, Eleven and Twelve than in District Four, but clearly Mags knew it; and given her speech difficulties since a stroke a few years ago, had opted for that instead of voicing her assent. Haymitch widened his eyes subtly in surprise.

"You're going along with this?" He asked. Mags nodded. Haymitch whistled lowly, before shifting his gaze back to Rufus.

"Rufus, I don't know what death sentence you're trying to get us into here. I mean, hell, you were around in the Dark Days; you really think this is even close to a good idea to cross the Capitol again?"

" _Yes, I do_ ," Rufus said sharply, more loudly than he expected; he lowered his voice before repeating himself. "Yes, I do. I saw the Dark Days, up close; I'm from /District 9, Haymitch, so don't talk to me about what I know about crossing the Capitol. I saw bomb blasts, I lived them when I was a kid; our shelter was so poorly constructed it's a miracle we survived. But you know what I see now? Starving children, every day, when there's so much to eat; at least in the Dark Days they died because there was simply no food. Media silence on the executions of hundreds; in the Dark Days at least traitors to the state were killed outright. And instead of the dead of the wars in the Dark Days, we round people up, throw their _children_ in an arena and call it _peacetime_. I've watched three Quarter Quells, Haymitch, and I'm not going to wait for the fourth."

"I lived a Quarter Quell, Warnke," Haymitch said quietly, his eyes flashing with danger. "Don't talk to me like I don't know it."

"Then act like you know it, Abernathy, and _stand up_ ," Rufus snapped.

"Enough," Beetee said, quietly but with enough conviction to silence the group. "I'm joining."

Haymitch blinked. "Really? _You_?"

"Do you have a problem with it?"

Haymitch frowned. "You're a District 3 is all. You're in the Capitol's good books."

"There's no such thing unless you're the President," Chaff said. His eyes reflexively moved to the cameras but his voice remained resolute nonetheless. "I don't know what you're planning, Rufus, but you're not a dumb guy and you're not a hasty one either. Just promise me you've actually got a game plan and resources?"

"A lot of both."

"Then count me in too." Finnick said suddenly, seeming to surprise even himself by his outburst. He coughed slightly, awkwardly. Rufus was struck by how young he was. "I don't have a lot to offer but I'll offer it. You've got Mags so you've got me, for whatever this is."

Johanna sighed, a long protracted breath. She clanged her fork back down on her plate and leant back. "Okay, alright; fine. I'm in too. It's not like I have a lot to lose anyway." Her voice betrayed a lot less of her fear than her eyes did. "Newbie, what about you?"

Quint's tone of response could have been mistaken for meek, given its low volume, if it hadn't been for the thread of steel running through his voice.

"They took from me," he said quietly. He stared at his plate with empty eyes. "My family. My friends. My- I- I can't even _walk_ anymore." He looked up, directly into Rufus' eyes. "If I do this and we get caught, Snow's promised to take them _all."_

"It's not your fight, kid," Haymitch said before Rufus cut him off.

"If you don't do this," he said with dark threads in his gruff voice, "You're gonna lose a lot more than limbs. You're gonna lose _yourself._ Did your friends die for that?"

It was manipulative slightly, yes, but if Rufus didn't do it he couldn't take District 6 as he so desperately needed to. Quint pursed his lips.

"Then... Fine. I'm with you."

Eyes turned to Haymitch, who began to shuffle uncomfortably.

"Oh, _god_ ," he groaned. "You're all crazy, all of you. This is going to backfire, people, and we are all going to die trying to complete some kind of self-obsessed suicide mission."

"And with that vote of allegiance from our fearless District 12 Victor," Johanna commented wryly, "I think we're done pledging loyalties. So what's next, President Warnke?"

The words resonated in the air nicely to Rufus' hearing. The Capitol was Plutarch's to pluck and pull at as he wished; but now, allied and ready as he was, he could take the Districts.

With a slight 'hm', he nodded slightly and sat back in his seat, surveying his group of strategic allies.

"We have some work to do."

* * *

 _Am I the only one whose account hasn't been working? I keep getting a '503 error' everytime I go to click on my account. I seriously hope it doesn't do that again anytime soon._

 _In any case. It's time to begin the plot proper, this is what we've been working towaaaards! I'm so excited it's happy dance time it's all ADVENTURE from here! Except not so much fun adventure as- uh._

 _They're gonna have a great time._

 _As ever, thank you for reading this far._


	9. Nine Hundred Miles

_With thanks to JadeRavenstone, Technicolour Raincoat, ColMikeFuser, deathless . smile and MidnightRaven323 for your reviews of the last chapt_ **er.**

* * *

 **THREE DAYS EARLIER**

 **N 50º 54.80544' , W 115º 51.7**

* * *

If Lexus spent time thinking about it, he'd probably admit that it's kind of an ego killer to have your captor be both twenty-five years younger than you, and a foot taller than you.

As it was, he was a little busy having trouble with his footwork on the still-smoking rubble.

"I can't believe this," Theon growled behind him with barely-concealed fury. "I thought it could be Quint, and we get these Capitol jockeys instead?"

"Mostly I'm just surprised they survived," Elizabeth noted as she in turn guarded Seneca's movements. Given that in order to walk a long distance Seneca was draped across Lexus' shoulder, Lexus wasn't exactly sure what she expected him to do. "I mean, I'm pretty sure they live under the arena where we were prepped for the Games, right?"

"That rabbit warren?" Emma was moving in front of them, swerving from side to side to watch the two of them at all times. Her sword was more than half her height, and she wielded it like it was made of paper. The casual display of strength was more than a little concerning. "It's surprising they're not _puree_ , let alone alive."

Glace Gratton dipped in and out of the group like a dart, swirling a dagger in her hand as she roamed the rubble, seemingly checking over every crevice. Her other hand was bandaged with spots of blood appearing through it, but if it bothered her she didn't comment on it.

"Maybe," she mused, "If they were trapped in a space with strong architectural integrity-"

"-Oh, that makes sense," Elizabeth said.

"Or you could just _ask_ us, you know, how we survived," Lexus commented. A dirisive laugh rose from Elizabeth.

"Oh, poor baby," she mocked with enthused tones. "Isn't it hard to have a load of people talking over you and deciding your fate and you can't do anything about it?"

"Ah-h-h," Seneca mused as he walked, "So this was all a little allegory on morals. That's cute."

From Lexus' viewpoint, he could see Elizabeth smiling with more teeth than was needed. She leant in slightly.

"I'm even cuter when I'm stabbing my axe into your back, Gamemaker _Crane_ -"

"Hey, lay off him!" Lexus said defensively. "We helped you get out of this dome!"

"Only when Quint threatened to bring it down on you as well as us," Emma mused. "How's that for losing to tactics and calling it a victory?"

"And now look what's happened," Lexus blustered, anger coiling in his veins. "We barely got the other staff out of the arena, we had to /exile ourselves to make sure they were exonerated of blame, and Seneca's-"

"-I'm fine, Lex-"

"-You're _not_ fine, Sen, you're _not_ , you've broken your ribs!" He craned his neck back at Theon and Elizabeth. "Come on, what are you going to do with us? Can't you have a little _compassion_?"

The blade that wrapped around his neck came not from Theon behind him but from Elizabeth. Her short hair bristled against his neck as she snarled in his ear.

"You take us here, you take our _agency_ ; you force us to fight for your pleasure and try to _kill_ us when we disobey, and we're supposed to show _compassion_?" Her blade bit tighter against his neck and Lexus winced in pain and fear. "I should slit your neck _now_ , you Capitolian _murderer_ -"

Theon's voice was strained. " _Lizzy_. You gotta keep it together a moment, just before we get there. Yeah?"

Elizabeth's blade paused on his neck just a second too long before she reluctantly pulled back.

"Only for now," she growled furiously.

"Of course."

"Don't call me Lizzy again."

"Not a chance."

There was a moment of silence before, in a strangled voice, revealing just how close she was to bitter tears, Elizabeth spoke again.

"They killed my _mother_."

"I know." Theon sighed. "I know."

In silence then they walked. Lexus was mostly preoccupied by fear of death and the strain of half-carrying Seneca across the distance, but the rest of his attention went to his surroundings. Lexus had lived in a city his whole life; his only access to nature was through the textbooks at school and the screens that had shown him the vistas of the Districts. But, it had always added afterwards, the Capitol was walled for a reason. Nature was dangerous; with nature came the creatures that had been left behind in the Dark Days, created for destruction, and beyond even that the wild creatures that nature had moulded for survival. Safety, Lexus had always been taught, lay in restricting your boundaries and staying where the government could protect you. He had told himself for years he couldn't trust everything the Capitol said, but old habits died hard and as they trekked into the shaded angles of the huge pine trees around them Lexus couldn't help but feel trepidation.

Into the wilds he went, carrying Seneca with him into a tangled mess of wild undergrowth with no set paths. Having walked on pavements all his life, flat and man-made surfaces, the adjustment was hard to consciously make, and especially so with Seneca draped across his shoulder.

Emma took Elizabeth's place guarding behind them, and Elizabeth moved ahead. Far different from Lexus' stumbling gait, Elizabeth moved as anyone who had lived amongst the pines a lifetime would; with terrifying grace. Her axe, built for war and not for practicality, shone with folded steel and woven carbon fibre as she swung it with toned arms. She moved as if she was part of the nature's landscape; she could dodge bracken and neatly bypass holes or mud with just the slightest fluid movements. Lexus was struck with just how _other_ her movements were; a District girl, not a Capitolian.

He shivered. A District girl with an axe, he a Capitolian with none. He did not believe himself a different class of humanity for being of the Capitol, but he did believe that if certain branches of humanity were given their chance for recompense upon him they would do so without thought or regret.

He shivered again.

With the sun beginning to wane in the sky the warmth of the air was cooling against his skin. He could begin to feel the damp of the undergrowth in dusk. Seneca stumbled slightly and Lexus, forced to take more of his weight and unable to both do so and keep his footing on the uneven ground, went tumbling down. Seneca hit the ground and cried out, curling in a ball; Lexus shot back up in an instinctive move to protect Seneca to face Glace instead, fast as a whip, her knife laid humming against his cheek.

"We're here," she said with her silk-smooth, nigh-emotionless voice. "So stop moving."

"Where's here?" Lexus mumbled, wincing as the words scraped the blade against his cheek. His eyes had been soley on Seneca, who was struggling to move where he lay, but now he turned his head just a little ( _ow, he thought as the blade cut his cheek_ ), he could see a small pile of backpacks and weaponry, the armed guards that had been his escort, and among them Emil Reynolds and Cesal Nesbin. Cesal had clearly been left behind to guard Emil, who looked despite the bandages as if his leg had been liberally tossed into a meat grinder.

"What happened to him?" He asked.

"You did," Cesal shot back. He stood, opening his jacket and pulling a dagger from its holster. "You, and the Capitol, and your fucking _Games_. So I'm about to show ya how _precisely_ your guts look while you're still alive to _see_ them-"

"-Hey!" Theon jumped in front with his sword as Cesal surged forwards to attack. "We can't just kill him!"

Cesal's tone was casual but his hand was shaking. "Sure we can, ya just take the knife and-"

"-Theon's right, we can't just kill him." This voice came from Emma, who tucked her sword into her belt but seemed not much less intimidating for de-arming. "We don't know where we even _are_ , and they do. We can't kill them, not while they have answers to give us. It's just tactics."

"Fuck tactics," Cesal bristled, although his shaking hand was already sheathing his dagger. "These fuckers did this to us. To Emil. To Quint. To _Dane-_ "

With a strained tone Cesal cut himself off hurriedly. His eyes widened just slightly, fearfully, before regaining their fire.

"My point is," he said at length, "Sure we can kill them."

"Sure we can," Elizabeth said slowly, "But.. Yeah. You're right. We can't touch them until they tell us where we are, how to get back."

"Get _back_?" Glace's eyes widened slightly, her voice threaded with incredulity. "But we just escaped Panem. Now we can go find somewhere new."

"We don't know if there _is_ anywhere new," Theon countered. "They always said Panem was all there was."

"Yeah, and they said that President Snow shot rainbows out his ass," Cesal muttered mutinously. He began pacing between the group and the prone body of Emil.

On the floor, Seneca gasped out a sentence that was entirely unintelligable. Elizabeth frowned.

"What? Speak up." She poked at him with her bloodstained sneaker a little, and he slowly pushed himself into a seated position, leaning heavily against a tree.

"I _said_ ," Seneca gasped again, "Let Lex go and I'll tell you."

" _What_?!" Now Lexus had the expression of incredulity that Glace had sported, and he wore it more plainly than her. "Sen, you _cannot_ be serious, even if that wasn't on principle stupid it's not a deal they'd even keep to-"

"-Damn right," Cesal cut in. "I say that you tell us or instead we cut your boyfriend's throat."

Glace didn't wait for further instruction; she moved her dagger from Lexus' cheek to his throat, rounding so she was behind him and her arm was wrapped around his neck. Lexus gasped out words desperately as Seneca did the same.

"- _Oh, Christ, please, I have a daughter-_ "

 _"-No, please, I can give you the co-ordinates, I can tell you-"_

"- _STOP_!"

While every one of the tributes carried their own authority in their voice, only Elizabeth's carried that undeniable thread of leadership. The group stalled as she yelled, and Glace's blade pulled away a little from Lexus' neck.

"-Stop," she repeated softly, seemingly unused to having such a large group of people hanging on her words. She paused, looking at the group, before laughing bitterly. "Wow, this has gone too far. Glace, he's not going anywhere without Crane. You may as well let him be for now."

Lexus gasped with relief as the biting blade disappeared. He moved away from the group uneasily, guarding Seneca where he sat.

"God." She sighed, moving to toy with her hair before seeming to realise her hair now stopped a few inches from her head. She started to instead toy with her axe, before putting it to one side and crouching down to match Seneca. "It didn't take us long to copy you."

"I've never put a knife to anyone's throat, kid." Lexus was perhaps a little more cutting than he should be when surrounded, but he was struggling to find the energy to be careful. All that was really keeping him upright was the fear of his location and the need to stay alive for both Seneca and his daughter's sake.

Elizabeth's expression hardened. "There's no difference between up-close execution and what you practised."

"There's a world of difference." Seneca's voice was hollow. He didn't sound like he believed even his own words.

"No, there isn't, and you're both executioners for President Snow, and you /enjoyed it," Cesal snapped.

"Okay, you know what, kid?" Seneca's eyes regained a little of their fury, and he curled a hand around his injured chest as he growled. "Don't talk about things you don't understand. We didn't _enjoy_ it, not even a little. You don't even understand where we are, or what happened to Sanchez, or why you're all here, you're just a bunch of _District_ teenagers, so why don't you shut the _fuck_ -"

Seneca cut himself off when Lexus placed a hand on his shoulder. Cesal had gone silent. His face had paled. So had a number of others in the group. Glace and Elizabeth seemed mostly unmoved, but the others had frozen in place at his tone, at his words. Cesal's hands were shaking again. Emma's mouth was twitching with the force she was using to keep it mostly steady. Theon was shivering, his head automatically lowered just the slightest inclination.

It was the coldest realisation of how true and untrue their words were. It was the most damning realisation. Face to face, despite the clear disparity of power, a lifetime of conditioning had worked its awful magic. Even now, despite pushing their way from the Capitol's influence, despite holding swords and speaking like they were the rebels of the Dark Days reborn, they were just teenagers, young and afraid, and the face of Seneca Crane had ruled their lives with the fear of the Games for so long that even now it still scared them.

Lexus stepped forward, just slightly, and watched Theon subtly shift back, as if afraid of being hit. He was a father, even if he hadn't always been the most present of fathers to his child, and Theon's fearful motion made his heart instinctively break just a little. He bit his lip slightly, moved back again, and lowered his voice to something more gentle.

"Okay," he said, and found all other words had died in his throat, and tried again. "Okay. It's fine. It's all fine. I don't know as much as Seneca knows but I'm gonna tell you as much as I can, and then Seneca's gonna take over, and he'll be more polite, and then nobody's going to hurt anyone, okay?" His eyes met Theon's, then Elizabeth's; he worked to meet everyone's eyes before he continued. "Is that okay with everyone?"

Glace had been the most visibly unmoved by Seneca's outburst, but her voice was still cracking slightly under the strain of being used. "Start talking."

Lexus sighed, sitting back to look at the scared and heavily armed teenagers he was stuck at the end of the world with. He bumped his shoulder softly against Seneca's, if only for a little reassurance that he was not entirely alone in this.

"We're in a section of the continent that is uninhabited and unused but for arenas. Maybe Seneca knows better, but nothing else exists here. Nothing ever has since the Great Collapse. As far as I know, nothing exists outside of Panem; nothing but the wilds."

There was a long, painful moment before anyone spoke; everyone had been hopelessly daring Seneca to contradict Lexus, but he just stared at the ground instead. Finally, Emma spoke.

"So where are we?"

"One thousand, eight hundred miles north of the Capitol. Nine hundred miles away from the closest District. Seneca probably knows what this place's pre-Collapse name was-"

"-Canada." Seneca had taken to staring at the ground exclusively now, like looking at anything else was too tiring.

"Yeah." Lexus sighed. "Yeah."

"That's-" Cesal coughed in shock. "I can't- nine _hundred_ miles?"

"I think that would be the distance to District Seven," Lexus added bleakly. "I wasn't great at geography."

Theon's sword dropped in a clatter to the floor. "There's _nothing_?" He said. His voice caught up with him and he yelled it like it was the only way to say it. " _Nothing_?!"

A jabberjay caught the words in the air and shot them back softly.

"Nothing," it mocked harshly to the wind as it fluttered upwards from its perch in the trees. "Nothing."

"We're stuck _hundreds_ \- _thousands_ of miles from home," Emma said, "With nothing, _no-one_ , but Panem? The Great Collapse killed everyone but us?"

"They made efforts to search for other survivors," Seneca said at length. "Back before my time. But by that time so much of the land had changed, and so much lost to our understanding; and that which we could find was empty. Most of the files were classified for a level above mine, but what I could read suggested that however our ancestors survived, it was by subterranean means that no others had. Half of the previously mapped land was gone, and it was getting harder to explore the further they went to the truly toxic areas of the world. Eventually, it was just- given up."

"There's nothing," Elizabeth said bleakly. "We're alone."

"Alone," the jabberjay crowed to hundreds of miles of empty forest. " _Alone_."

* * *

 _So my mind thought, where's the worst place to abandon my and your darlings in? The solution seemed clear- /Canada. If you run those there coordinates through google they will turn up where our fearless friends are all actually situated at the moment. For a poor Brit who didn't know where D.C actually was until this year, I've planned their locations meticulously._

 _So you may ask, why are they trapped in Canada? To buy cheap souvenirs shaped like moose, obviously. Nah, I do have a plan, but it's one of those things where you're gonna need to trust that I have at least some idea of what the hell I'mdoing. It's hard to tell, I know._

 _Next chapter I introduce another character from the new roster, so I'm excited to write that; whether I et it done before the summer holidays is a different question._

 _As ever, thank you for reading this far._


	10. Blood Red

_With thanks to Technicolour Raincoat, ColMikeFuser and MidnightRaven323 for your reviews of the last chapter._

* * *

 **Y184-09-07 T 14:30:21**

 **DISTRICT 6**

* * *

It was early September now, and the summer was beginning to lose its heat, but today was an exception. Early August had returned again in full force, like it had been before he had been Reaped; the air itself reverberated with dense, thick heat, fierce and humid like a blanket on the air.

Quint returned to District 6 with instructions and motive, and an artificial fanfare from artificial crowds. He wasn't sure where they had gotten so many pro-Capitol individuals to place in front of the crowd, but there they were, clapping and cheering. He had to smile, to wave, to accept the handshake and car ride from the mayor.

He'd permit it. His objective required it, and right now that was the most important thing in his life.

The crowds' cheers in a cleaned and touched-up town square diminished as the car, mercifully air conditioned, started to take them through the city. The familiar sight of the drug-riddled inner streets returned, silent and melancholy.

"So, Quint," the mayor began. She had been the mayor since before Quint had been alive; she was in her mid-sixties, but still spoke with the conviction of someone half her age, despite the desolation she ruled. "We retrieved the rest of your belongings from your apartment. There wasn't a lot to retrieve. I'm surprised you made it to survival, given your background."

It wasn't a Capitol jab at his meagre upbringing so much as it was an honest expression of surprise. The outlier District Victors were rarely from a background like his; they were more affluent, better fed, with more freedom from work to spend learning practical skills.

Quint had nothing but the knowledge he had gained as a mechanic, and yet here he sat, Victor.

He knew it was nothing more than luck and allies that had brought him here, but he wouldn't argue with the mayor. He remembered from not so long ago the easily-bestowed lash of her Peacekeepers.

"Mhm," he hummed, staring resolutely out of the window. The streets rushed by; he saw his own apartment building pass by.

To his shock, he saw something on the soot-stained brick.

Spray paint, swirling and vibrant colours that had already faded; although it took him a moment to realise the fading was from attempts to clean it off. It wasn't a bad likeness of himself, although clearly stylised for effect; his grey eyes had been made to shine silver, and for once his messy, curly hair laid true on his head. Around him was a cacophony of colour, reds and golds most prominent; they swirled and blazed across the walls.

Smaller, but arranged in a line beside him nevertheless, were six other portraits, also stylised for effect. Elizabeth's cut hair laid around her neck in waves of russet red, the trees behind her offsetting the colour; Emma's hair, meanwhile, floated in the sea behind her, the end of her braid pointed like a trident. Theon finished off the left with greys and blacks of stone behind him, his tanned skin tone and dark pooled eyes standing out from the backdrop. On Quint's right, Cesal was given rippling colours to simulate cloth, his face resolute, his black cap from his Reaping returned to him once more. Emil recieved billows of black smoke, a red medic's cross on his shoulder, his long blonde hair curling through the smoke. Glace's background was shimmering silver, the same colour his eyes were painted, but it was flecked with just a little red. Her eyes glittered fearlessly blue.

And around them all, the snarling mutts that plagued their nightmares; but they were aflame or injured. The red and gold background turning to flames. The eternal white dove that was President Snow's emblem, soot-stained and bloodied and dying and lying beneath Quint's portrait.

Quint gaped at the image painted on his home as they sped past it. It didn't take a lot of study of imagery to understand what the artist had been implying by the singed and dying dove.

The mayor shook her head, just a little.

"We're encouraging celebration, naturally, but some are taking it a little too far. After all, it was an _accident_ that led to your victory."

Quint knew that her meaning of the word 'accident' could here be interpreted as 'rebellion'. Which was precisely what that mural had implied. Which was precisely what Rufus had said was happening.

He was taken aback by the urge he now felt to fulfill Rufus' plan. He had been doubtful to say the least before, but now he could see the signs. Extra Peacekeepers posted everywhere on the streets. Scorch marks on the paving stones. Blood mixed with the dirt in the alleyways. Hastily scrubbed-off graffiti, but nothing approaching the vibrant, untameable beauty of the mural left behind on his home's wall.

By comparison, the mansion he was presented with in the Victor's Village felt bland, identical, soulless. Quint smiled, an expression foreign to him, shook the hand of the mayor again and watched as the car left him behind at his new house.

He looked up at the bland white walls the Capitol had gifted him.

He decided they needed some colour.

* * *

Walking was slow going when he was still learning to use his bionic prosthesis, and he relied heavily on his slim metal cane as he limped down the streets. Ordinarily, this would be an invitation to getting mugged in District 6, but Quint found that unlike before, unlike the lifetime he had spent in his home before, he was no longer an anonymous mechanic in the city of steel and steam. The people coming home from work around him stared as he went past, but did not approach. The crowds parted, subtly but respectfully, from his path.

He walked alone, but the city that watched him walk seemed to be quietly expressing their solidarity, their companionship.

It was terrifying and it was monumental. Quint realised just how right Rufus had been. He realised just how much the tides had turned, his revo group for once uniting Districts that had never seen cause to unite; scared individuals becoming groups in their solidarity of the sole survivor.

A shiver of fear and excitement ran through him. He was the one they were rallying to now; he had to capture them while they remained enthralled enough to demand their own escape.

He turned the corner, back to the tiny street that was no longer his home. He had to watch his step here; while some citizens had clearly been roped into cleaning the area up, broken glass and blood still remained on the concrete and paving-stone ground. He knew that, as he made his way down to the mural, every eye, citizen and Peacekeeper, laid on him. He shivered minutely but kept his face inexpressive, his eyes passive.

The greatest scene of chaos was beneath the mural.

Blood had dried a russet colour on the pavement, tracked by footsteps of hundreds of people running; probably last night, and probably from Peacekeepers breaking up the chaos that had caused this. Citizens likely press-ganged into cleaning up were scrubbing blood from the ground. And at the mural, a man- no, a boy stood, a teenager, with a bucket of black paint in his hand and a pensive look as he stared up at the mural he was about to deface.

And Quint realised; really, he should have realised far earlier.

Nico Marquette had been in his year at school, back when the District 6 schools had had funding to run. He was going into his grandfather's business of decoration; many District 6 citizens were employed in this way. They would learn a skill required by the rich, in this case interior decoration, and then travel around on cargo trains when required for specific jobs. Still, the work was sporadic in timing, and Quint remembered what Nico did when he wasn't decorating, because he had seen him do it when as children they had travelled in the same schoolboy circles; he painted murals on the streets.

He was incredible at it, and vibrant colour was almost his calling card, as was his typically more subtle undermining of the Capitol within it. Doves featured heavily, often shadows painted behind scenes of subtly implied destruction; but always in joyous colours, a violent celebration of vitality. Nico never put a signature to his work, but everyone in Quint's school year had seen him work at least once, almost always under cover of night.

And there Nico stood, square-shouldered and messy-haired and paint-streaked, perfectly styled to look like he never styled anything at all. His posture as he swung the paint can was loose and relaxed, but his piercing blue eyes told Quint he was anything but.

He had clearly been brought in by the Peacekeepers, and in entirely accidental irony had been asked to destroy that which he created. If they knew it was his, he'd be joining the red on the walls.

He risked his life to paint Quint's likeness on his home. He had probably incited the rioting that had clearly taken place last night.

"Nico," he called, and Nico jolted, sloshing black paint where it mixed with the blood on the ground. His alert blue eyes widened.

"Quint Barkwater!" He announced, shock colouring his voice. "Hey, uh, nice to see you back. I saw President Snow crowning you this morning, so I didn't realise you'd be back home so soon." He glanced over at the guards, watching as they slowly patrolled past, slowly getting further out of earshot. Quint watched too.

"It was an honour." It had not been. He still remembered Snow's threats, and remembered the treason he was now committing with Rufus and the Victors, and every second of the Coronation Quint had been waiting for the President to snap his fingers and let the guards shoot him down, or cut off another limb. His leg ached.

Eventually, the guards were far enough out. Nico turned his attention absolutely to Quint.

"I pai-"

"-I know you did." Quint didn't have time to waste. "Did it cause the-"

"-It did."

"Right." Quint looked up at the mural. Weeks ago he was no-one, and now his likeness created war?

Nico shifted uncomfortably at watching his painted Quint looking at the real Quint. "Do you, uh, like it?"

"It's, uh- interesting. It's an interesting picture." Quint squinted up at the portrait of his own face, unsure of how to phrase his thoughts on it to the artist of it. "Uh. I don't have silver eyes, obviously."

"Oh, I know, but it's stylistic. You know, to make your eyes pop out at the viewer." Nico did a vague approximation of jazz hands as he said it. "'Sides, you've already got that whole pretty boy look going on, so it wasn't too far of a stretch."

Quint blinked. "-'Pretty boy'?"

Nico's casual tone faltered a little as he realised Quint was staring at him. He shrugged a little with faux nonchalance. "Yeah, that whole- 'Ooh, I'm so stoic and clever and I have messy hair and sad eyes and I just burned down a building' look."

Quint blinked again. "The pretty boy look is 'I just burned down a building'?"

Nico looked back to his work, his face reddening just a little as he dipped his paintbrush in the black-pooled bucket. "Shut up."

Quint watched a moment as Nico reluctantly began to obliterate his own artwork. He looked up at the dying dove painted on the walls. Then he nodded to himself, his mind made up.

"I need you."

Nico almost dropped the paintbrush. His jaw dropped a little as he turned.

"I, uh- _okay_ , I mean, I'm kinda a little busy with work here, but-"

"Not like that," Quint corrected himself awkwardly.

Nico's mouth shut again with an audible click.

"Get a guy's hopes up," He muttered. "Serves me for chatting up the Victor with the pretty-boy talk, I guess. What do you need me for, then?"

Quint glanced back at the guards behind them. This wasn't a safe place to talk; thankfully, he had his own safe place for doing that now.

"I'm thinking about painting my house."

* * *

Mercifully, despite his apparent inability to keep his mouth shut about Quint's 'pretty boy' eyes, Nico didn't say a word about his prosthesis, or the slow limp that it now forced upon Quint; he took the change of walking pace without argument or comment. He had plenty of comments about a lot of other things, though.

"I am _shocked_ , seriously, that you could get me out of Peacekeeper duties and they didn't even question you. They must be so scared of you! I mean, I gotta say, I'm a little scared of you."

Quint replied with one long, quizzical stare. Nico nodded emphatically.

"Like _that_! You stare people down and it's really intimidating. Plus that whole thing with stabbing all those mutts, I mean, that's _brutal_!"

Quint's mind froze, and so did his expression. He kept forgetting about the cameras that had followed him through the arena; everyone in the District had been obliged to watch everything he had done. And when Nico meant 'stabbing mutts', did he include Cesal in the brutality?

Nico glanced over, his eyes widening as he realised that he had said absolutely the wrong thing. He backtracked hastily.

"-But really, the coolest stuff was all the stuff the Capitol wouldn't let us see. I mean, we caught a little of it- you in that weird room, with the computers. What was that?"

They turned the corner to Victor's Village, passing by the Peacekeeper guards as they entered through the gates. Quint led Nico through the doors of his house and then pushed him back with as much torque as he could manage. Nico slammed against the wall, and Quint placed his cane on Nico's chest to keep him from moving forward.

"First of all," he hissed, keeping his voice quiet but urgent, " _Don't say a word against the Capitol._ "

Nico frowned. "Wha-"

"-You heard me, don't do it, not now. I need to _not_ be suspected, at least not as much as they already do, and if I'm walking around with someone talking about what the Capitol won't let us see they'll execute you and put me under house arrest. Do you understand?"

Nico nodded hastily, his eyes wide as he looked at the cane pressing on his chest. "Yeah- course, _shit_ , sorry. I just- I just _really_ \- I mean, you hate them too, right?"

Quint tilted his head a little. Then he stood back, his cane back to his side. He led them both into the drawing room. Nico, who had likely never been in a room this opulent, slowed down and stood still, looking around. It was a Capitol style, but more refined and simplistic; the couches were large and soft, but without the unusual aesthetic designs the Capitol so adored. A huge glass telescreen took up half of one wall, while the rest was decked in subtle reds, golds and browns, like the furniture. Nico cleared his throat awkwardly.

"Uh." He said, staring at the telescreen that likely cost both their wages a hundred times over. "Nice, uh. Colour balance in the room."

"I think it's a little too much gold," Quint replied. "Keep your voice down; this is the only room I've removed the microphones from, and I don't want them to realise I did that."

Nico jolted at the word 'microphones'. "Did you say-"

Quint held up a tiny, cylindrical device from his pocket; at least, at one point it may have been cylindrical. He dropped it on the ground and further destroyed it by crushing it under his foot. "They're the same ones they used in the Games. Glace showed me where they hide 'em."

Nico's voice was uneasy and more guarded now; his eyes did not leave the crushed technology on the carpet. "I didn't see you guys doing that."

"There's a lot you didn't see." Tired of standing, Quint sat on the plush red couch furthest from the french windows; Nico took the other end of the couch, idly admiring the fabric as he spoke.

"Anything in particular?"

"Rufus Warnke."

"...Did he parachute in?"

Quint rolled his eyes. " _After_ the Games."

Nico smirked; his easygoing persona changed to a more acerbic one. "And here I thought you liked my jokes. Am I just not good enough for you anymore?"

Quint wasn't typically one for joking, but he played along for once, raising an eyebrow and a tiny smirk of his own. "One more word out of you and I'm leaving you."

"Fine! They say don't marry for money, and I should'a believed them!" Nico made a move as if to dramatically leave the room, before stopping, seeming to remember the serious context under which the two were meeting. He cleared his throat slightly.

"But yeah. You were saying. After the Games, Rufus Warnke approached you. Approached you about- what?"

Quint stepped closer, his voice lowered to barely above a whisper. "Rufus is collecting together a team of former Victors, myself included; we span a large number of the most powerful and most populous Districts. We're planning something big for next year's Games, and we need people like you. People who don't like the old order; people who'll help us gather together the riots into-" Quint broke off, remembering the words Rufus had drilled at the meeting. " _An army_. Tangible support for a Panem that isn't run by the Capitol. I need someone who can create chaos, but only chaos for the Capitol; to raise a guerilla army to defeat our captors once and for all. We know you can do that. All that's left to ask you is- you want in?"

Nico raised his head slightly. He made complete eye contact with Quint. His eyes flashed with resolute anger, and he smiled with a flash of teeth.

" _Always_."

* * *

 _Nico Marquette is Munamana's character, and I'm excited to introduce him to the ranks of the characters! Next chapter I introduce another new'un- and now I'm finally on holiday, it shouldn't take too long!_

 _Speaking of the new'uns, I'm also taking part in a collab on top of Ivaylo! '24 by 24' is hosting another 24-author collab, and I'm heading up the D10 male slot. I think there's still slots available, too, so if you've ever wanted to kill my characters off, now's your opportunity! ;) I hope to see some familiar faces among the group._

 _As ever, thank you for reading this far._


	11. The Go-Between

_With thanks to deathless . smile, Technicolour Raincoat and and MidnightRaven323 for your reviews of the last chapter._

* * *

 **Y184-09-07 T 22:45:00**

 **DISTRICT 9**

* * *

Silently, as the sun set across the golden fields of District 9, Robyn Blackthorn crept out of bed.

The darkness wasn't quite absolute yet, and it was with the last slivers of daylight that she found her riding clothes, slipping them on in darkness. Last, rustling mutinously as she put it on, was her most prized possession beside Cinder; her jacket. It had been an adult men's jacket, and slid halfway over her hands and shoulders as if to illustrate just how un-adult and un-male her figure was; but when belted tightly and worn with pride, she looked every part the rebellious, leather-jacketed, older rider she wished to appear to be. She pulled her long russet hair from where it was caught underneath it, hastily plaiting it into a half-decent braid before tying it together with a scrap of string. On went her boots, and her messenger bag over her shoulder, and she was ready. Slowly, quietly, she slid out of her room, desperately minimizing the clack of her boots against the bare wooden flooring.

Her parents couldn't know they were doing this, meeting him; they thought what he stood for could ruin the business and home they'd worked their life to get.

Robyn didn't refute that, but she was merely disinterested in those consequences.

Her brother was outside, already making his way to the stables. She closed the door carefully then rushed across the farm to meet him, her long auburn braid catching the last of the light in the sky. It was a moonless night, and the stars glittered above them, a soft glow in the sky. As ever, Robyn looked up habitually until she saw a great red glow, the flickering light of a strange star she had never been taught about. She had often asked what it was, but not even her teachers had known.

She had always wondered if the Capitol knew what the red star in the sky was, flickering as it did like her hair in the last embers of sunlight.

"You were careful, right?" Her brother whispered. His eyes glinted in the light, an odd golden brown that caught the light like her hair.

"Of course I was," Robyn replied. "Dan, how stupid do you think I am?"

"Oh, only as stupid as usual, Robby Robyn," he said fondly. Despite the height difference, Robyn could still scuffle with him a little until his advantage of height, age and strength overpowered hers. She stifled her giggles of amusement to keep the quiet.

Dan pushed open the door to the stables; the familiar and comforting smell of horse and sawdust washed around them. Robyn instinctively made her way to the partition she knew best; a dark form whinnied softly and nuzzled at her hand as she offered it to its velvet lips. A dapple gray coat, silver and fine with dark spots rippling the surface, breaking over the crest of its mane, which was pure obsidian. The Andalusian mare raised her head, whickered, and regarded Robyn with her intelligent brown eyes. She smiled, rubbed its neck, swung over the fence into its partition, then began to buckle on the saddle.

Dan looked over as he led his own stallion, large and jet-black, their classic Blackthorn-bred plough horse, through the stable. "There's not time for that," he said urgently. "Just take her out and let's go!"

"Alright, alright, hold yer horses," she quipped, ignoring the groan her brother responded with. She led Cinder gently with a hand on her neck, opening the gate and leading her behind Dan and his stallion. The stable door opened; the stable door closed. They mounted their horses, Robyn unused to doing so without a foot on a stirrup but managing nevertheless, and then ushering their horses into a canter, away from the farm.

Dan's horse was a member of the Blackthorn breed; a plough horse, tall and strong, sold for considerable prices. District 9's fields were always in need of plough horses, and while District 10 bred them they were rarely bred well; they simply didn't know what was needed in a good plough horse. The Blackthorn family had filled that gap, and in doing so had made a lot of money.

Robyn's horse, however, was decidedly not a plough horse. The Andalusian, king of horses, the horse of kings, was a war horse, fast and intelligent and responsive to their rider. The breed was a rarity in Panem, and the Blackthorn family had purchased a single mare as a foal when a District 10 herd became available for sale. While the family used it mostly as a horse for training others, and as the single horse besides the breeding pair that they did not sell, it was generally regarded as Robyn's horse; she had named her, ridden her since she was able to be ridden. Cinder was her horse, and could gallop like a silver wind. As they left the farm, she urged it into doing so, leaving Dan in her dust as they rode through District 9.

Being out after curfew was an offence that was always punished by execution. Since the riots of the past few days, the unrest following the 76th Hunger Games, the Peacekeepers had cracked down on anyone out after nine, and the patrol teams had increased in size. Still, Robyn wasn't worried; she knew every inch of her agricultural District, and rode faster than any other in it. The two cut into a wheat field and crossed it at speed, Cinder's hooves finding the ground with a surety that training couldn't create. The night had closed in now, but Robyn's eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and she led the way.

* * *

The huge barn that housed crops for the District Reserve was, for now, empty; in the coming weeks, it would be filled to its twenty-metre ceilings.

Tonight, it housed two hundred people with ease.

Dan rode up behind her as she dismounted Cinder; she waited for him as he too dismounted and walked up beside her.

"You know the knock?" She whispered.

"Course, they told me," Dan responded. He gently rapped his knuckles against the wooden door in a rhythm. A rattle of something being scraped away from the door, and it opened; the two walked into the gloom of the barn, leading their horses in with them.

Sonorous tones were already speaking as they walked in.

"-Is why we _have_ to stop acting is individuals and band together as a coherent _group_ ," Rufus Warnke said, sitting on a platform of pallets. Two hundred people had been what Dan had guessed would be the attendance, but he had been wrong; somehow, three hundred others had found their way to the barn. Rufus' eyes glanced up as Cinder whinnied, and they met Robyn's. Robyn stood still, green eyes caught in the searchlight beam of Rufus' alert gaze.

"Welcome," he said with interest. "It's good to see young blood for the cause. What's your name?"

"Robyn Blackthorn."

"Oh-h," he said with clear interest as the five hundred turned to see the Blackthorns that had turned up to a revo meeting. "No wonder you rode here. How old are you two?"

"Eighteen."

"Fourteen."

"Fourteen," Rufus repeated, his eyes not leaving Robyn's. Robyn, unused to the attention of so many and defensive of how she seemed to be the youngest here, spoke up.

"I have an Andalusian," she said sharply. "She's really fast, and so am I. I'll do anything needed to further the cause."

Rufus' lips quirked in a slight smile. "I'm sure you will, and I'm sure your speed can be put to great use," he said. "Can you evade patrols, are you that fast?"

"Easily." If there was one thing Robyn was proud about, it was her prowess at riding. Rufus nodded contently.

"If your brother will permit it, you would be a great help to the cause. Our allies in neighbouring Districts need to take us messages every so often, and we to them; electronics are out of the question, as right now they can be so easily tapped. Until we fix that issue, we need someone to take us messages from the District borders; are you willing to do so?"

"More than willing." Robyn puffed up a little with pride, her smile increasing in size. Dan looked worried as he glanced between Rufus and Robyn, but said nothing.

"Then it's settled. Now, about the matter of Peacekeeper brutality..."

* * *

The crowd dispersed slowly; Rufus had never anticipated how much everyone wanted to meet him, talk to him, understand why now he had put out feelers with the District's most prominent revo groups and rioters. They all wanted to talk, they all wanted to shake his hand; they all wanted to let him know they were willing to do _anything_ he asked of them. It scared and excited him that he had brought in such a response- he hadn't realised just how much District 9 would bring in unrest, and especially with the guiding hand of an elder Victor of the Hunger Games.

Still, he mused, watching as the Blackthorns mounted their horses and rode away, Robyn with her new instructions for her courier assignment: there might just be hope yet for a few ancient traditions like the Games.

There might just be hope yet for a lot of things.

* * *

 _I'm on holiday and it feels fantastic. I'm completing chapters, I'm going outside, I'm watching films in real cinemas, and it's only been the weekend! Also, I've been binge-watching The West Wing. When it ends, because I almost have finished watching it, you'll know by the pained screams._

 _In any case, thank you to JadeRavenstone for Robyn Blackthorn! In case y'all couldn't tell, all the horse stuff came from their submission form; I've never even come close to a horse, let alone know how to handle them. I've tried my best but I don't know one end of a horse from the other._

 _As ever, thank you for reading this far._


	12. Human Resources

_With thanks to Glassgift and MidnightRaven323 for your reviews of the last chapter._

* * *

 **Y184-09-08 T 01:56:10**

 **THE CAPITOL**

* * *

"-I'm not saying there isn't _untargeted_ unrest, sir, but the Hunger Games-"

Caesar resisted the urge to stage his own, right here in this meeting room.

"-Plutarch, it isn't the Hunger Games that should be blamed for this," he cut in with a lot less of his characteristic charm than usual. It was almost two in the morning and this meeting would never end.

"Oh, my apologies, _Head Gamemaker_ ," Plutarch growled with vitriol, "I wasn't aware that the arena _hadn't_ been brutally destroyed on camera with seven revos responsible."

Caesar bristled at this, sitting up sharply and staring down Plutarch across the table.

"And I wasn't aware that your head was rammed so _monumentally_ _far_ up your-"

" _Silence_."

President Snow's voice was far from statesmanlike in this moment; his very being bristled with anger. Caesar and Plutarch, no matter their seniority, were conditioned to obey their President's voice; they fell silent. Anamaria Dimitri smirked subtly where she sat.

"I didn't call you to _my_ meeting room for you to waste the privilege. Do not make me rethink who should be punished for treason."

The room's atmosphere darknened with the sky outside; the Capitol's nighttime parties had not yet resurged, the shadow of death still blanketed them all.

Caesar's sleeplessness weighed on him heavily. He supposed this was why so many Head Gamemakers either resigned or died; the stress of trying to fix his predecessor's mistakes was almost overwhelming. Add that to Plutarch's bloody-minded agenda to overturn his newfound throne, and Caesar was just about ready to hand the damn job to Heavensbee, title and all. He wasn't even sure why Plutarch wanted the job so much he was willing to kill Seneca Crane for it; he was the Secretary of Communications for the government, arguably a far more highly valued position.

The President sighed. If anything, he seemed more tired than Caesar; while he would never dare to say such a thing out loud, he reckoned it could be to do with the fact that Snow wasn't getting any younger.

And his only surviving relative was his granddaughter; she was so young, so easily replaced.

"This has gone on long enough, and none of you are any closer to solving the crisis. Anamaria, I want a progress report on the District riots by seven tomorrow, no later. Oh, and you were saying about the Avox?"

"We hit a milestone. 147 thousand now converted."

Caesar shuddered minutely; he had always despised the concept of re-education. Not only becoming a servant of the Capitol, but its slave? And to lose his voice, that which he treasured most? He couldn't imagine a worse fate.

"See to it that the centers are ready to recieve more. I'm intending to break the leaders as soon as you locate them."

Anamaria nodded sharply, bowed and left. President Snow gestured irritably to the rest of the room's inhabitants, and the room stood and left. Plutarch made sure to slam his shoulder against Caesar's on the way past, with a tiny, vindictive, 'sorry, man'. Caesar smiled in response like oil spreading on glass; smooth, immediate, unnatural.

Caesar, having been furthest from the door, took the longest to get to it.

When the President spoke, he wondered if the seating had been done by chance or design.

"Flickerman."

Caesar turned. "Yes, sir?"

The President stood, slowly but definitely. He stood upright with the posture of a king, but his hand brushed the table like a lifeline in case he fell.

Caesar spotted this tell. Caesar always looked for tells. Tributes and politicians were just the same; they all wanted something, and they were all lying, all the time. After a while, it was second nature to observe them, to find their weaknesses, to see their true self.

President Snow wasn't so much scared of falling over as he was scared that he wouldn't get up again.

"I'm not about to get rid of the Hunger Games, Flickerman, so you can relax."

Caesar exhaled with a little more showmanship than was perhaps necessary. He smiled sadistically at Plutarch's retreating form through the windows of the meeting room.

"Still don't trust your Communications Secretary?"

"That's beside the point, Flickerman."

Caesar knew a 'yes' when he heard one, and satisfied, dropped the matter to focus on the President entirely.

"Then what is, sir?"

"As Head Gamemaker, so far all you've been involved with is planning the Victory tour for Barkwater. Anyone can plan a Victory tour; I need to know you're right for the job of fixing the Capitol's interest back on the Games and away from the _wrong_ Games. Do you understand?"

"You want to know what I'm planning for the 77th Games."

"Correct."

Caesar smirked. With no Plutarch to second-guess his motives, he could submit his own ideas for the Games without anyone suspecting him of anything treasonous.

"I'm planning that we do it this year."

Snow raised an eyebrow. "This year?"

"We move forward Quint's tour to next week. We spend the week after on the tour, moving back to the Capitol. And when he hits the Capitol-

"-We begin Reaping," Snow surmised with interest.

"The people need distraction, and what better distraction than what's already distracting them?" Caesar said, leaning back against the meeting table with a tiny smirk. Snow tilted his head.

"We can't build an arena in two weeks."

"With respect, sir- we can. Right here in the Capitol." Caesar leaned in with barely restrained excitement at his vision. "If they want to work together- let's let them. Let's _make_ them. And this time, the Capitol won't want them to win, we'll make sure of that."

Snow tilted his head further, an eyebrow raised more. He gestured slightly for Caesar to continue.

"We reap in the outlier districts the most rebellious rebels, and in the career districts we reap the kind of awful, self-centred personalities that make good television. We make the Games a mix of the most disgusting Careers in the Districts, and the most dangerous rebels."

"And then?"

"And then we tell them that this year, they all have to work together. That killing is banned. Instead, we hand the Capitol that power."

"You can't let Capitol citizens kill in the Games."

"No, no, of _course_ not, President Snow," Caesar said. "But we can do that for them. All they need to do is _vote_."

The dark gleam in the President's eye at that told Caesar that he was imagining the same thing he was.

"They'll tear each other apart when we set them challenges they can only confront as a group. They'll either be Capitol-hating or so objectionable they may as well be, and the Capitol will be baying for their blood." Caesar's smile was sadistic and sharp. "And then we'll hand them the button, and then we've not only sated their bloodlust- we've _directed_ it."

The Capitol's lights for now were dark, but Caesar knew that soon they would be alive with the gleam of crimson red.

* * *

 _A short chapter? Yes, but I've written it in the scant hours between my film project finishing and then packing for a holiday to Norway. Actually, as I'm typing up my author's notes I've noticed I have to be up in 3 hours to get to the airport, so I'll make this quick._

 _Depending on wifi, I could be gone all week or not at all; regardless, the plane journey should give me opportunity to write a little more. I'll be back before you know it, so don't fret; with more new character intros, a few of the old, and the brand new 77th Hunger Games (finally! I hear you cry)._

 _As ever, thank you for reading this far._


	13. Dark Days

_With thanks to JadeRavenstone, deathless . smile and L. Reginski for your reviews of the last chapter._

* * *

 **Y108-02-01 T 22:47:07**

 **DISTRICT 0**

 **SEVENTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO**

* * *

With February's cold, the soldiers had died in their droves.

The President sighed as he looked over the latest intelligence reports. Sometimes, he truly despised what his career had brought him; sometimes, he truly wanted to lie down and let the Revo Alliance win. He'd let District 13 kill his citizens, if he could just have one night of restful sleep...

 _You'll never rest again if she wins,_ his treacherous mind supplied. _Because she won't just kill your citizens, she'll decimate them. Remember last month? Remember what she did to her own District's loyalists?_

His eyes slowly drifted to the USB stick on his desk. Scorched, metallic, slim and printed with the sigil of an eagle, it was everything that told him why he was still fighting.

He squared his jaw and looked up at his intelligence officer, Daria Han. She was brilliant, if slightly drawn to the odd styles of the new generation; she forwent the austere style of her cooworkers for a strange, colourful outfit, covered in glitters and candy colours.

Today, her eyes were too shadowed with pain to bring out the glitter and shine of her lipsticked smile.

"How did they die?" He asked, knowing he knew the answer.

"She sent a short-range ballistic missile into the barracks; we believe it could be a newly developed pyrotechnic homing device." She sighed. "Mr President, it's time to discuss the final option-"

" _No._ "

"Sir-"

"Daria, I am _not_ going to send a nuclear missile to District 13. Not yet, not now. Not while we have other options to consider."

"Sir, if this is about the ethical concerns of killing citizens, the mayor surpassed that limit of war when she bombed the s-"

" _I KNOW, DARIA!"_ The President roared, slamming his hands on his desk, standing straight up and staring Daria down. Her eyes widened in shock; he was only ever tired, cynical, joking, or all three at once. Never angry, never. He knew it too. He looked down at his hands, sighed, and leant back where he stood, adjusting his cufflinks.

"You think I don't know?" His voice cracked a little, and he silently berated himself for the weakness. "You think I don't know she deserves everything coming to her?" He took a deep breath, centering himself. He closed his eyes, unwilling to look at the numbers on the intelligence report. Every digit was another life lost in his name.

"President Sanchez?" Daria's voice sounded as lost as his, as scared as his. He sighed inwardly. He had to be the strong one, no matter what. It was his job as the official of his country.

He pulled himself up, opened his eyes; he stared down Daria with the last vestiges of his strength.

"We're going to respond with a comms strike; EMPs, missiles, anything that can damage antenna. They can't use a homing device if they can't control it."

"Yes, sir." Daria nodded shakily, turning to leave.

"Daria?"

She turned. "Yes, sir?"

"I want a briefing on the potential outcome of a nuclear strike. A _briefing_ , nothing more. If it gets out to press, if it gets out to _anyone_ , I'm revoking your codeword clearance."

"Sir." She saluted sharply, her way of thanking him for considering the nuclear option, and left the room.

President Sanchez sighed, looking up at the large clock on the wall. It was almost eleven, and he was still in the office. When had he last slept? Yesterday? The day before? He needed it, he knew that much.

Sighing, he dismissed his guards ( _a waste of resources, if someone was to ask him; he was the least important piece of the war_ ), striding from the office and upstairs before he could be accosted for another purpose.

He brought the memory stick with him.

* * *

Matthew Sanchez, tall and caramel-skinned, with shots of silver on his temples mixing with his otherwise black hair, had never really expected to become President of Panem.

After all, when he had become President it had been Year 100, only a century after the Great Collapse; there was still so much work to do to fix the atmosphere and ground, to make the world liveable once more and finally lower the gates and walls that enclosed the Districts. Matthew was just a politician, in charge of the poorly funded Entertainment Sector; his entire Presidential platform had been a farce to try and push funding for his sector.

And yet, for some reason; District 0 had caught onto it. Something about his promise, his pledge of making Panem into something more than bread, to give 'panem et circenses', it excited the administration District far more than he had ever expected.

So they voted, and in their droves, for someone completely wrong for the job. Not Beatrice Quail, the expert in District diplomacy; not Sunny Malhotra, the expert in environmental matters. District 0, who were supposed to be the neutral force in the Districts, the ones voting for the most capable leader, voted instead for the face they liked and the words they could chant and the promise of an escape into entertainment instead of the hard work of self-improvement.

It had scared Sanchez so much to stand on a platform he had not wanted and did not deserve, to chant 'panem et circenses' like it was their deliverance from the world that was too hard to improve.

But the false glamour of Year 100 had coiled in his stomach like a snake, the chains of office glinting gold, and Matthew had followed them like his light in the darkness.

District 13, the nuclear District, the ones intended to try and find habitable land in the wastelands, to clean the mess of the toxic world the Great Collapse had left behind, got new orders. Matthew won re-election by claiming the work was finally done in fixing their broken world; he won it again by revealing the missiles he had created from the blueprints of the old world. Unneeded, certainly, when they stood alone on Earth as the only survivors, but it was a sign they were restoring the old ways, before the Great Collapse.

Complaints started surfacing; why still, then, the fences? Could they not leave if the world was better? And why did they still work so hard? Could they enjoy the endless sunlight of the administration District, could they share in Matthew Sanchez' light?

Matthew found the complaints were harming his reputation, and so soon before re-election. The chains of office glittered so sweetly in the light.

The fences became electrified. There were creatures, dangerous ones, he cried into a microphone to silence their anger; creatures that prowled the night, mutated by the Great Collapse. District 13 and 10 would work on fixing it, he said.

To make sure they believed him, he got hold of the best in District 3 and made creatures dangerous enough that they would believe him.

Dissent continued. They did not care if the mutts were real, they would take their chances; they wanted to leave, to rediscover their beloved world that was now, he said, made safe.

The world wasn't safe and Matthew Sanchez knew it and the top names in District 13, covering this up as they were, knew it too.

And so the mayor of District 13, maybe angling for promotion, maybe angry at Sanchez, who knew, told the world the truth; that the world outside had never been safe. That Sanchez had lied.

And then came the darkest days.

District 0 had missiles but so did District 13, and they pointed them at each other with malice. Sanchez took to the microphone to calm the people as he always did, but this time he was drowned out by the crowds. District 0, placated by their constant repetition of 'panem et circenses', stood alone with their President. Everyone else, angered by the lies and the work and the apparent corruption of the neutral administration District, stood against him.

But Sanchez had never believed anything would truly happen until Capitol School.

Capitol School, so named for how close to the center of District 0 it stood, was so large and beautiful it was often mistaken for the Presidential mansion. It was a school for the whole of District 0 to learn how to administrate Panem's Districts, and was well-regarded as both being free to its people and brilliant at teaching. Matthew's daughter Amy had gotten into the school without having to try; she was a natural diplomat, a brilliant debater of ideas and concepts. Matthew had been so proud of her when she first came home with an A on her environmental essay; he had always been proud of his baby girl, his only child.

District 13, it turned out later, had intended to end the cold war between the two of them surgically and quickly The mayor ordered a long range non-nuclear missile to hit the Presidential mansion, and only the Presidential mansion.

Capitol School, so large and so beautiful, so like the mansion and centred right in the middle of District 0, was targeted by mistake.

Matthew had to be forcibly restrained from leaving the mansion, from running into the hellish firestorm that his Amy, his _girl,_ his _baby gir_ l was in. His screams of anguish had torn through his throat as a gutteral howl.

Capitol School was decimated and the war began proper. Matthew refused to stop, stop fighting, stop _killing_ until he had seen the mayor dead, her and her son, and he'd kill her son _first_ in front of her _eyes_. He didn't _care_ anymore, not when _Amy_ -

So many had died and yet he still did not have peace. Capitol School remained ashes on the ground, blowing in District 0's sky. So many children dead. His baby girl, dead.

Matthew had long been separated from his wife, and did not know until he saw her face next to an obituary that she had joined the most dangerous front in the army.

Sometimes he wondered whether she had wanted to see recompense, or just had wanted to see Amy once more.

Dark days and dark skies, filled with ashes. Matthew had seen the memory stick the next day, when it was presented to him, smuggled from the mayor's war office, from Volumnia Snow's clutches.

It carried the eagle of America on its scorched surface.

* * *

 _Okay, I hear you yelling right now. What is screening doing? Does she remember what she's writing? Why hasn't she shut up about that memory stick since chapter one of Jacquerie?_

 _Because when I plan stories, I plan them /hard, folks. The whole plot's bare bones have been in the making since the beginning and it's so complex and huge I never even thought I'd get to the Sanchez chapters._

 _I'm a crazy crazy plotter don't look at me. I wrote this whole thing on a train 900 feet above sea level._

 _As ever, thank you for reading this far._


	14. A Day In Panem: Morning

**PRESENT DAY- A WEEK LATER**

* * *

 **4:00 AM**

* * *

 _Khhhhhhhh._

Maybe once the klaxon had worked, but now it only spit the characteristic white noise of an electrical fault. Still, the noise sufficed to wake Alec up, it seemed.

Squalid concrete cells in squat concrete buildings, he had discovered, existed within the Capitol; but as a Capitolian, he had never gone far enough into his city to find them. He had realised he had watched Quint run through them in the Games, chased by mutts- but back then he had never realised that the purpose of these run-down buildings were to house the considerable Avox population that existed to serve the people that had so created them.

He knew all too well now. He slept among them on the hard floors, a swaying bulb casting awful shadows on the wall. He wore grey. He felt grey.

The Avox stood before their supervisor, a harsh Capitol Guard who was more than a little lenient on the whip, could enter the room. Alec had just about learned to match them now, and today spared himself the pain.

Each of them were handed brooms, each of them regarded with a disgust and distaste becoming of their being.

A labyrinthine inner city of Avox scurried out from the ashen cells they lived in, Alec now amongst them; ready to clean the streets of the revelry of the previous night.

Once, when drunk and newly a couple, Alec and Ganymede had stayed up early enough to watch the Avox clean the streets. The two of them had absently hurled their bottles of alcohol at an Avox's feet, leaving the Capitol's servants to clean it up while they watched the sun rise.

Alec looked up at that same sun, still infuriatingly the same.

Mouth stretching open, his fury and fear and crushing injustice swirling to a point, Alec hurled a completely soundless scream at the morning's cruel light.

Around him, his fellow Avox started to clean what the Capitol had left behind.

* * *

 **5:30 AM**

* * *

Dewdrops shimmered on the stalks of wheat, dampening Robyn's clothing as she waded through the golden sea. Tomorrow was the harvest, and Robyn could feel the pressing, damp cool of sunrise that always heralded a turn in the seasons. Winter would soon come; and then she would watch the hunger set into her people again.

The cold was dispelled from her home, but it wasn't for others. The cool sunrise reminded her of her mission.

Robyn was on foot today; she only used Cinder in the dead of night, when the light wasn't betraying them. A final dispatch had been given to her early in the morning, and while she knew her absence would be noted by her parents, she had promised Rufus she would do all that was required of her.

A simple address, a well-guarded one. Robyn reached the border fence for District Nine. She found the well-cut and well-concealed hole she had made, in a section her fellow messengers had rerouted the electricity from. Mud and dirt clung to her as she shimmied under the slim gap, one hand protecting the message in her jacket as she did.

She had been told the letter was more important than herself, and she believed it.

Soft now, quiet in the crunchy undergrowth of mid-autumn. She heard the whistle and took her place amongst the undergrowth, facing onto the railway tracks.

She had learnt by now what to do.

 _Screeee-_

The train rattled past her, sucking the air past it in a cavalcade of wet leaves and dust. She grimaced, coughing, before setting her mind again to her task.

The supply trains came past District 9 every two hours, on the dot; an enforced punctuality that made the trains groan and creak under the strain of what was asked of them. They took grain rations from Nine to Six, and then to Seven; but by then, she would be long gone from the train.

While the trains were moderately well-designed, and performing well despite being a decade past retirement, the train stations had been built a long, long time in the past; the lines had been in use ever since the Dark Days. As such, the train was too long for the station, and its end stuck out into the forestry behind it.

It was here that the messengers of District 9's Rebel Alliance, and now Robyn, took advantage of the poor infrastructure of their home. Sprinting from the concealment of the undergrowth, unseen by the Capitol guards so carefully guarding the carriages that fitted onto the station itself, Robyn leaped up, grabbing onto a handrail and wheeling her legs to gain purchase on the sheer surface of the train's metal, before yanking on a heavy-duty door latch and scraping the corrugated iron aside just enough to slide inside.

She dragged the door shut, looking around quickly to make sure she was alone.

She was not.

A man, short and stocky, perhaps in his late fifties and covered in soot, was midway through loading a sack of grain into the carriage she had jumped into. He stared at her, her muddied and young face, her too-large leather jacket, her hand clutching something in her pocket.

He put down his sack of grain, placed three fingertips to his mouth, and silently presented them to the air.

Robyn had seen this action being passed around in propaganda leaflets; in conferences, by word of mouth. It hadn't been Rufus' idea, but it had spread nevertheless.

It was a sign of respect; it was saying goodbye to someone you love. This man was both exalting her and mourning a sacrifice not yet made. While it was slightly morbid, Robyn still felt a swell of pride. This man, who could be punished by death for aiding rebels, did so without hesitation. It was a sign of the changing tides that his own wellbeing was something he no longer seemed to ally to.

She repeated the gesture, and then neatly gestured for her to conceal herself behind a pile of grain sacks. The man aided her in clearing a space, before covering her with a sack jammed between the piles of grain and the corrugated iron. She was concealed better than she could have done alone, and had been left a big enough space to comfortably wait out the next two hours.

And so she would.

She gently flickered her fingertips over the crackling paper message in her pocket.

The address read 'District 6'.

* * *

 **8:00 AM**

* * *

 _Ding_.

Velarius Eppoxe, the new Master of Ceremonies, poked his head up blearily from underneath the covers, rubbing his eyes.

 _Ding_.

He winced. The alcohol from last night had made its way to becoming a hangover, and his throat burned from soma.

Two women, pretty models both, also poked their heads up from underneath the covers.

"What's that, babe?" One crooned.

"Is that for you?" The other added.

"Ladies, ladies," he grumbled, "One at a time."

"That's not what you said last night," The first model supplied with more than a little overt teasing.

 _Ding_.

Velarius growled, wincing at the piercing sound.

" _DOOR!"_

A clatter and a click as his Avox unlocked the door with haste. Sighing, Velarius absently pushed his way past his two companions of the evening before and made his way to the door.

It didn't really occur to him until Plutarch Heavensbee jolted and turned away with a yelp that he might not be entirely clothed.

Or, indeed, clothed at all.

"Morning," Velarius said with a begrudging sigh, gesturing for his Avox to get his clothes. He wasn't exactly a man without pride, and his body was certainly something to be proud of; still, he wasn't exactly pleased to be caught without clothes twice by his superiors.

"Yeah, morning." Plutarch grated the words with a tone of stress, his back still to Velarius.

"Not seeing anything you like?" The comment was more a half-hearted attempt at trying to get Plutarch to leave than anything else; Velarius had never really been one for the guys, and _especially_ not for Plutarch Heavensbee.

"I'm more here on business matters, Velarius."

Oh, how he hated it when assholes like Plutarch pretended he was on a first-name basis with him.

"What a shame," He said, lacing his words with a large amount of honey. "I have two expensive girls just going to waste right now."

"You can get back to them soon enou-" Plutarch started to turn, realised Velarius was still standing there and completely without clothing, and turned hastily away again. "-Do you not have a dressing gown or something? They're in fashion right now, I hear."

 _Plutarch_ , Velarius mused as he traced his silver tattoos with one finger, _wouldn't know fashion if it shot him in the head._

 _"_ Oh, but of course," Velarius said courteously, ripping the clothes his Avox offered him out of their hands. "I've just been too exceedingly busy to think about fashion; you understand."

The closest he could come to outright stating his opinion of Plutarch's clothes, and the Secretary of Communications knew what he meant full well, although he seemed less personally affronted as he did faintly annoyed.

A feeling of each other that was mutual, then. Velarius had only ever seen Plutarch as a harried bureaucrat, who could probably pass for a District citizen if he rolled in the mud a little more.

Plutarch stepped inside as Velarius dressed himself, which wasn't really what Velarius wanted, but he couldn't exactly tell the Secretary of Communications to leave his house.

"There are certainly more pressing matters. I'm given to understand you are the new Master of Ceremonies?"

"Ah, so news has reached you." Another jab at Plutarch's current state as the vilified member of government, but one he couldn't resist. "Do you have an assignment for me?"

"Two, actually." Plutarch pulled out two folders from his briefcase, but didn't hand them over. He observed Velarius carefully "But it depends on you which ones I give you."

Velarius blinked. _So the rumours were true; Heavensbee really is working his own agenda._

"How so?"

Plutarch's eyes flickered around the room, seeming to check for anything that could be used to record conversations. Velarius almost wished he did have something recording right now, but bygones were bygones; besides, he valued his own home's security more than taking down Plutarch Heavensbee.

Satisfied of his security in this room, the Secretary of Communications then spoke in an obsfucating thread of lies and truth.

"Listen, we both know Flickerman is working his own agenda. He's a traitor to the state; he's going to use his position as Head Gamemaker to destroy the foundation of Panem and President Snow. You've never been a friend of your television rival; if you work with me, you can eradicate that rival."

Velarius blinked. _It would be a good pitch,_ he thought, _if I was more naive_.

It was true he was no friend of Caesar's, nor of the superiority he had always lauded over Velarius' show. Caesar Flickerman was certain to only ever be looking out for himself; he held little loyalty to the state unless the state rewarded him. In many ways, Velarius and he were the same in that they were ruthless, independent but utterly capable of being charming, the masters of propaganda.

But Plutarch Heavensbee was /unpredictable. He was a man ever searching for power, for some reason that Velarius thought unusual. He didn't have the characteristics of someone power-hungry; the Secretary of Communications was in fact a tired and weary man, in public and in private. And yet, he always strived towards power, closer and closer to Snow.

Velarius prided himself on knowing secrets, but Plutarch evaded his every attempt to understand him; and for that, Velarius considered him dangerous.

He did not like dangerous men.

"What does Flickerman wish of me?" He asked, and face falling Plutarch handed him only a single folder. Velarius only wished he had the means to cheat Plutarch out of whatever was written on the second; it might help explain Heavensbee's motives.

Still, the first- _ah_ , the first was interesting regardless. A broadcast, tonight of all nights; for the first time, he was taking Caesar Flickerman's evening spot on Capitol TV, side-by-side with his rival.

And it was going to be _marvellous_.


	15. A Day In Panem: Morning II

**PRESENT DAY  
**

* * *

 **9am**

* * *

"-So, conclusion: the Games are continuing nevertheless, and Velarius has decided to be Caesar's little lap dog or something."

Rufus sighed, tapping one finger absently against the wooden table the ancient laptop rested on.

"We'll work with Velarius when the time comes; we're in this for the long game, and you're close enough to undermine him. The Games-"

Rufus looked down at his hands, inspecting an old but still raised scar on his left palm. He never had gotten back the majority of movement in his left hand. He sighed.

"-We'll figure them out too. Besides, I have some assets lined up. Got any dates for the victory tour?"

"Flickerman and Snow have a little secretive cabal going on; I don't know anything other than it's happening and it's already in the latter stages of planning. I'd guess sooner than usual, maybe a month shy of the usual midwinter launch." Plutarch paused. "What do you mean, 'assets'?"

"It's a long game we're playing, and we need some players. Beetee has his eyes on a Calotte, Quint has- someone he thinks is incendiary, I don't know who, and I personally have a Blackthorn on my books."

Plutarch was silent for a time.

"Rufus, that's brutal."

"We live in a time of brutality," Rufus countered gruffly. "Not all of us have spent our lives with more."

Plutarch shifted uncomfortably; Rufus' hard truths were something he apparently wasn't used to facing up to in Capitol society. "Point taken."

"I'm sending out missives about recruitment; I'm getting our victors to start driving people to join the Rebel Alliance."

"We're actually calling it that?" Plutarch said with a slight wrinkle to his nose. "I told you, Rufus' Army will galvanise the people, give them a name to chant-"

"The same as you guys chant 'Snow'?"

Plutarch shifted. His eyes were lost in shadow.

"You know I don't."

"Sorry," Rufus said, knowing he had gone too far with his sponsor. "But you understand my reasons. I can't create some kind of army under my name. We remember too well here the kind of person who makes that sort of-"

"-Culture of personality. I understand." Plutarch said, conceding the point with a magnanimous gesture of his hands. "The Rebel Alliance it is. Do you think you can rally them even without the name?"

"Sure I can. The riots are a sign of that."

Plutarch frowned. "Really? The riots? That's just undirected anger, looting, pyromania-"

"-From where you are, I guess that's what it looks like, but I've been seeing it every night. These people aren't arsonists and burglars, they're just looking for a direction to move in that isn't a dead end. They see one guy beating up a Peacekeeper, they join in."

"It's more violent and unpredictable than I'd consider wise for a revolutionary force."

"Look, you're a great politician," Rufus said, deciding to just charm his way through this call, "And you're an expert in politics, and for that I'm grateful. But I know what I'm doing here. These are my people. Let me do this; I guarantee that it'll work."

Plutarch considered this a moment, static crackling over the line.

"Fine," he said with a sigh, hands up in defeat. "Take your rioters and make what you will of them. Just don't blame me when they're too volatile to work with."

"Fine," Rufus grated with a forced smile, before cutting the connection. The ancient laptop was shut off by an aide nearby, and Rufus collapsed back in his chair, rubbing a hand over his face in frustration.

Plutarch was a necessary help; but a damn infuriating one.

* * *

 **10am**

* * *

"I really don't see why this is necessary." Seneca shifted uncomfortably as Elizabeth neatly tied his hands behind his back.

"We may need you to lead us back, but it's not exactly like we trust our captors."

"I can get a lack of trust, but what if we fall over?"

"You'll probably break something."

"Don't you care that-" Seneca cut himself off with a frustrated sigh. "You know what, ignore me, dumb question."

Elizabeth finished tying the knot on the cord around his wrists.

"We're not without compassion," she said calmly, but with the stumbling tone of someone unused to using words as weaponry. "That's why we waited a week for Emil to get well enough to walk."

"Barely."

"But you're a Capitolian and you're the /Head Gamemaker. Credit us with a little self-preservation, because the second you have an opportunity to fuck us over, you'll take it."

"And if we didn't know the way back better than you, you'd have stabbed us in the back by now."

Glace walked by suspiciously casually, checking and re-checking her newly restocked knife belt.

"Actually she's right, Mr Crane; we're not without compassion. We only need one of you to lead the way."

Her cool blue eyes caught his gaze and held it. She never expressed a true warning; only an analogue of it, a hint of her ever-turning analytical mind working its Machiavellian cogs.

Seneca searched for words to say, but Glace didn't seem interested in them; she exhaled brusquely and turned away, one knife a blur of silver in her hand as she swirled it deceptively casually.

Seneca looked up at the forests that for the last week had been his shelter.

God, but he hated them.

Elizabeth, who had that strange and unnameable quality of de facto leadership in the group, moved through the forests like a sylph, the trees an extension of her senses. Seneca, on the other hand, would have had a tough time of moving over natural and uneven terrain even with a full range of movement; he had spent his life in the city. As it was, his bound wrists and still-injured side reduced him to little more than stumbling over unfamiliar ground.

Lexus walked up slowly to Seneca from the side, Theon in tow. His wrists were bound as well, but he looked a little chirpier.

"Looks like we're finally getting out of this hellhole, huh?" He said, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet.

"Glad to see you're enjoying yourself," Seneca said in a deadpan tone. He didn't think this was funny at all, not after listening to Glace threaten Lexus' or his life.

"I just wanna get out of here, go south, and get home," Lexus said.

"Where's home anymore?" Seneca replied softly. "You know we're not going to be greeted with anything else but a bullet if we went back."

Lexus' mouth hardened to a thin line.

"It's all we have left," he intoned eventually.

A rustle behind them and the group completed itself around them; Cesal closely shadowed Emil, who had a hastily fashioned stick-crutch and a grim look of determination on his face. The others, in various states of disrepair and exhaustion, huddled around them, and a strange circle emerged.

"Alright," Emma said, shifting her backpack on her back. "We're going to see how walking goes, right?"

"Right." Theon said. "If anyone needs to stop, just say; Emil, I'm looking at you here."

"I'm fine," said Emil, which had becoe such a constant refrain over the last week that even Cesal looked mildly annoyed by it.

"Call me when you can move your leg, kid," he muttered, loud enough for the group to hear. Emil shifted slightly off his crutch and then smacked it against Cesal.

"Hey! You asshole, what's that for? I've been carrying you around all week!"

Emil smirked slightly despite his pale complexion and the dark rings under his eyes. "Carrying makes it sound like you had either the strength or the height to actually carry me."

Cesal rounded on Emil with an anger that was only partway serious, and Glace intervened.

"Let's start walking before we kill each other, okay?"

Seneca muttered mutinously, only loud enough for Lexus to hear.

"Yeah, how unlikely's that?"

Lexus snorted, and Glace turned and shot daggers at him until he made an involuntary whining noise.

"Okay," Elizabeth said. "This can only go well. Let's get out of this dump."

* * *

 **11am**

* * *

He walked across District 6, a concealed can of spray paint in his jacket.

The night before had been a riot; one of the largest yet. A Peacekeeper had killed some tiny child the day before, on a charge that he had been playing with a stick-gun and pretending to shoot Peacekeepers. News travelled fast in the transport district, and when a vigil was held peacefully and privately, and then violently broken up; well, the public only had so much patience for peace, and they wanted the Peacekeepers dead as much as the chid had.

But they didn't even have a stick-gun.

Nico bit his lip as he weaved past the uncleaned carnage of the night before. He believed in rebellion, he really did; he painted pro-revo murals all over District 6, recruited like a maniac for the cause. But there was a real difference between the ideals of a revolution and the reality.

He couldn't avoid every puddle of blood, and his boots were covered now in a mix of watered-down blood and the odd bit of unavoided viscera.

There was one or two bodies still left unclaimed in the streets, and the flies were swarming them with a cloud of death. Nico held his breath and avoided his gaze but he couldn't ignore that it was there, that it was only a child, perhaps half his age, and he wasn't very old to begin with. It was pooled in blood, and he couldn't avoid stepping in it.

Typically he wouldn't come out this soon after a riot, but he had a purpose today, and he had to make his way to district boundaries to manage it.

Nico Marquette, in his scant time as part of the revo forces, had mostly spent the time four ways, between painting pro-revo murals, aiding in recruitment, trying to downplay his pretty much blatant crush on Quint, and trying to obscure what he was doing from his family.

His parents, lifelong factory workers with the health issues to prove it, wouldn't likely complain if he was to join in on the riots and revos, and- well, he never saw them enough for them to complain about most anything he did.

And besides, he had seen the morphling needles they used to get through each day.

But his grandfather- he worked with him. His grandfather had taught him to paint, had given him free reign of the supplies when they weren't using them to paint some Capitolian's new colour scheme. That was a hugely expensive promise, but his grandfather had always kept to it- with the caveat that he kept out of trouble, always kept himself safe.

Nico felt that if his grandfather was to ever see his murals, it would be the end of him. That was a heartbreak he couldn't afford to bear.

He sighed, kicked at some trash on the ground, and walked on.

The District boundaries for Six were heavily guarded; while all of Six' inhabitants travelled outside of the boundaries frequently, this only meant the Capitol were more concerned about them escaping. Fences were high and electrified in all places, inpenetrable.

But he didn't need to get out.

Today, someone only had to get in.

And he was to help them.

The supply train from 6 pulled into the station, and the Peacekeepers, yawning and tired from the riots the previous night, customarily checked the carriages.

But they didn't check whether someone had slipped out the other side.

Checkpoints were set up between the train and the main District, but Nico had lived in Six a lifetime, and as a child had played around a collection of discarded shipping containers nearby. The Peacekeepers were too exhausted to see someone slipping behind the checkpoint into a maze of discarded containers at Nico's signed direction, and Nico moving to meet them.

They met in the middle, among the rusting metal. As they walked to meet, Nico realised for the first time how small his messenger was, how young; she was at least four years his junior, but wore an adult's leather jacket and a proud expression. She was smeared in mud, but Nico could see long russet hair beneath the grime, braided neatly and tucked beneath her coat.

In short, she looked like a child wearing adult's clothes, and far too young, even to Nico's adolescent eyes, to be risking execution to take him messages.

The girl frowned slightly.

"You're not Quint Barkwater."

"Nice deduction," Nico said with a little grin. The girl didn't seem to share the amusement.

"This message is for Quint Barkwater's eyes only."

"And it will be. I'm Nico Marquette, I'm his- uh-" The quote 'right-hand man' came to mind, unfortunately replaced itself in his head with 'right-leg man', and was entirely discarded. "-I'm with the revos."

The girl looked suspiciously at him, which given her youth and tiny size was almost hilarious, if she hadn't been entirely serious.

"Yeah? How can I trust you're not lying?"

Nico opened up his jacket and flipped an aerosol can of paint in his hand. The girl's eyes widened.

"You're the guy who's been painting the murals. I saw a picture on Rufus' dispatch table."

Nico couldn't help stroking his ego.

"Did you like them?" He asked with a little grin."

The girl considered the question.

"You made Quint's eyes too sparkly," she finally decided.

Nico's ego dropped to somewhere near the ground.

"His eyes are sparkly! You haven't seen them, not in reality, they're like stars trapped in a person!"

The girl wrinkled up her nose a little. "What, are you his boyfriend or something?"

Nico's ego dropped entirely to the ground as he realised that downplaying his blatant crush on Quint probably didn't involve complimenting his eyes. He self-consciously swiped at his hair, pushing it in place absently.

"How do I know I can trust you, huh? You could be- you could be a spy, or something, and-"

The girl produced a letter from her jacket pocket, both eyebrows raised.

Nico cut himself off. He coughed awkwardly.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"So, uh." Nico snatched the letter up quickly, stuffing it in his pocket. "Who are you, anyway?"

"Oh, that's not important." The girl puffed up a little in pride. "I'm the messenger, that's all you need to know."

"And if I asked?"

The girl paused. She scraped her foot in the gravel a little.

"Robyn."

"Robyn.."

"...Blackthorn."

Nico's eyebrows raised practically to his hairline.

"Seriously? The Blackthorn Blackthorns?"

Robyn raised her hands in frustration to the sky.

"No, the Blunsthorpe Blackthorns, yes them!"

Nico laughed a little. "But you're ridiculously rich!"

Robyn pouted a little in turn. "Doesn't mean I don't believe in the cause. I'd do anything for it."

You'd do anything?" His voice wasn't so much incredulous as surprised, but Robyn seemed to take it as a challenge.

"Yeah, of course. You've gotta help the good guys, no matter the sacrifice."

He raised his eyebrows, crinkling the letter in his pocket.

"You believe in good guys?"

Robyn smiled, and spoke with a distinguished, collected pride; her voice carried just a tiny amount of the Capitolian inflection on the vowels, a glimpse of innate privilege hidden beneath her mud and leather.

"We're doing the right things for the right reasons, aren't we?"

"-Yeah, I guess."

"Then we're the good guys. And, obviously, Snow's the bad guy. You see- good guys and bad guys. The world isn't always shades of grey; sometimes we really are that polarised."

Nico, not wanting to admit he'd never heard the word 'polarised' and didn't catch the meaning from the context, crinkled the letter a little more pensively.

"I guess."

Robyn smiled, clapping him on the shoulder and then backing towards the train tracks as a whistle blew faintly in the air. "That's my ride. Stay safe; there's a war coming, and we'll need everyone we can get."

She ran away, small but determined, across to the tracks.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets, as much to warm his cold hands than to conceal the letter he held. He rubbed the thin fabric of his sweater pensively, thinking about the sturdy warmth of Robyn's leather riding jacket.

He wondered if she was right; if they were the good guys, he could certainly agree that Snow was the bad one.

But yet- but yet.

The flies were beginning to buzz around the child's corpse as he passed it by on his way home.

* * *

 _Could you imagine if someone didn't update something for months on end with no real explanation or warning, even though they had the chapter done for all that time? Wow, anyone who did that would be a dick._

 _...Okay, explanation time. I wanted to write Ivaylo. I really, really did. It was burning me inside not doing anything for this after so long consistently updating it (well, consistently is a relative term), but I was applying to university and wanted to devote everything I had to it, even if I had to take all year off._

 _Why only one term off, then? ..Well, I may or may not have just recieved an unconditional offer to study English Literature with Creative Writing at a pretty high-ranked university. So, uh, not really as stressed anymore. Consider this my celebratory chapter post._

 _(Yes, I'm being a bit proud. Yes, they made a massive mistake offering me an offer to study writing, of all things. What can I say? I'm as astounded as anyone else, but I'm not going to correct their mistake.)_

 _It's nice to get back to Ivaylo. I'll try not to abandon it again (or talk about myself for five paragraphs, wow). If anyone's still reading this story after 3/4 months of abandonment (and 200 words of self-absorption), it's great to see you all again._


	16. Surprise!

His lips are sky-blue, toxic and glorious.

He smiles with them but they don't quite work well in tandem- his lips fit together but not like you'd expect them to. He's had a lot of cosmetic surgery and while the Capitol's cleanest butchers are experienced in what they do they aren't nature and they can't be perfect. His smile is uneven but, ah well, he paints it beautifully.

Caesar Flickerman smiles as the light hits his lips, and the crowd cheer.

He is being, for the pageantry of such a rare event, beamed across Panem. All citizens can watch him, see him, and this level of power is a trust of a butterfly landing on his hand- Snow will flutter off should he suspect a thing.

But Caesar recognises this. Everything tonight has been vetted, double and triple vetted, and he will remain obedient, pliant, until the day of reckoning.

Nothing is in writing but everything is planned. Caesar is a clever man and a careful.

The camera team, dressed all in black, shuffle about and consider angles. Caesar sits and waits, eyes fixed in space as a man with a makeup brush brushes it up and down his face, switching blush out for eyeshadow. Caesar closes one eye, then the other, feels the powder cover up his skin.

He fixes an eye for a moment on Velarius Eppoxe, his successor and newly ordained subordinate. Velarius is watching him, his sharp leonine eyes fixed unblinkingly, a makeup man carefully fixing his hair in place and being entirely ignored. They lock eyes a few seconds, then Caesar breaks eye contact with an ease that he knows comes across as indifference and swivels his chair methodically.

Camera 1, 2, 3. Look to the left first as it zooms in, tilt to face the camera on his right for a friendly address, then as the lights lower- it's time for the centre.

One, two, three.

Bait, switch, ascend.

"Okay, Mr Flickerman," the producer says through his earpiece, "It's been a pleasure all these years, so all that's left to say is you're live in five, four, three-"

The earpiece is drowned out as the music is cued. Caesar turns to the left, smiles at the camera, regards the audience with a shining smile. The bugles play and the crowd cheers as if they're on cue as well, and Caesar sends an arm out waving as he waits for the camera to zoom in.

"Capitol, it's Friday night, and you know what that means- it's the Caesar Flickerman show!"

* * *

There is a television in the school halls, old, all cathode-ray tubes and static, and while ordinarily nobody would be watching it, or even be in the multi-purpose hall at this time of night, a fire had broken out in last night's riots, and many of District 7's Sixth Zone are holed up temporarily in the building overnight, shivering under the few blankets and belongings they had saved as they wait for the night to be over. Nobody can sleep with the sounds of riot and ruin outside, so one of the mothers, desperate to keep her children calm, has switched on the television. Other than the Hunger Games, no signal ever reaches the television, but the snow and static, the comforting background radiation music of the universe, is good to block out the sounds of screams and muffled gunfire.

Except, for the first time in years, the television experiences an unexpected broadcast.

"-it's the Caesar Flickerman show!"

The young children in the hall, half-asleep and half-awake, rouse each other. "Hey," they call, "the tv's on!", they cry, and they cluster cross-legged around the box perched on the table, blinking up at the fuzzy staticky colours with bright eyes.

The adults eye it with wary suspicion, but the older children and teenagers are most scared. They, who live most acutely in the Capitol's firing line, know not to trust it. They do not trust this smiling man, and they mistrust what he portends more than the fire and bullets behind them. At least bullets are honest.

Caesar Flickerman smiles out at them, wets his electric blue lips, and looks to the camera on his right.

* * *

"Hello, Capitol! Hello- my _dearest_ Capitol. And for the first time, a warm welcome to the Districts!"

The lights are too bright now, and he can't make out the audience, but he can hear their murmurings. He cocks his head and listens.

"Yes, welcome to the Districts, because this is no ordinary Friday night. Panem, I've been honoured to present Friday night shows for- well, far too long," he says fondly to their laughter, "and I've been more than honoured to find myself in the position of Master of Ceremonies, a position never before trusted to a television presenter. But all good things- must come to an end."

Silence. Caesar smiles.

"Dearest Capitol, dearest Panem, it has been an _honour_ to present your Fridays and your Hunger Games, but this shall be my last. After a long consideration, I've opted to resign my job, so that I may serve my country more closely than I currently do."

The audience groans like they've been wounded. Caesar hides his smile beneath downturned blue lips.

"I know, I know- I'll miss you all. But you won't need to miss me, because a new Master of Ceremonies has been chosen- you might just know him well. Panem, please welcome the Master of Ceremonies, Velarius Eppoxe!"

One of the most verbal arguments Caesar had had with Velarius' transition team was about the music he would enter with. Velarius' team wanted to take on Caesar's theme (being, quite simply, more stately than the electronica Velarius had previously employed), but Caesar was loathe to give up such an integral piece of his public recognition. Eventually, when it became clear nobody was going to budge but him, he demurred but accepted the alteration, with a single caveat- it had to be altered significantly from his own.

So the music started up, the lights shifted from Caesar to Velarius, and the beats were the same but the tune was different. Caesar's theme was heavily imbued with trumpets and brass, but Velarius' theme integrated the electronic baseline he was known for- there was more percussion, less brass, but the overall sound was a wall of sound, less welcoming than Caesar's and a little less professional but more ultimately authoritarian.

And Velarius imbued the music- he owned it. Caesar moved with his music, but Velarius moved as he wanted and expected the music to move with him. Wearing his most stately suit, mostly black and only accented with gold, Velarius had adopted a leonine impression. His gold braids had been set in a scraped-back ponytail and then let loose at the point of the tie- they puffed outwards, an ersatz halo that caught the stage lights beautifully.

Mane, lion, king of the jungle. A simplistic visual impression, if one Caesar could respect.

And hate- the man was a bastard, in every way the word could be used. But he could put a sentence together and speak it well, and he was possibly the only man alive who could bring the Capitol back from the brink of mistrust.

Besides himself, of course- but his own role was different now.

Velarius reached the front, and Caesar stood, shook his hand, pulled him in for a hug. The camera loved it, the audience too, which grated on his nerves slightly. Velarius was a tall man and Caesar disliked feeling small.

Stepping back forcefully, Caesar with a smile waved his arm out and permitted Velarius to take the seat. Velarius took it as if it had always been his.

"Hello," he boomed, understated but omnipresent in delivery, "my Capitol."

* * *

Quint dropped a plate on the ground as he turned on the television to see Velarius Eppoxe sitting in Caesar Flickerman's chair. He left the shards of porcelain and his meal on the floor, eyes frozen to the television set.

Velarius Eppoxe wasn't a man he knew well, but it didn't matter what he was like- a change from the status quo was the most worrying thing. It meant the circumstances the revos were operating under were about to change.

Velarius addressed the center camera, eyes boring into it. He smiled and showed too much tooth when he did.

"Yes, hello, as the new Master of Ceremonies. I'm truly honoured to be given this role, and I hope to bring in a new age of entertainment."

 _A new age?_ Quint found himself, as he now often did, reflexively rubbing the place on his leg where flesh and metal met.

"But in bringing in a new age, we must not forget the- Caesar? Where are you going?"

Quint blinked. Velarius just _outright_ called Caesar old, and in a way that felt off-script. That was surreal. Not that Quint would complain. He'd hold his grudge of Caesar until he died.

"Oh," Caesar said with an unchanged smile, turning from where he was walking away. "I'm just headed backstage, Velarius. She's all yours."

"Not- just yet, my dear Caesar Flickerman," Velarius purred, standing smoothly. This part, at least, was certainly rehearsed- he spoke more monotonously when he was on script. "I've been asked to give you a goodbye message- from the President."

 _What?_ Quint thought, and when his incredulity reached a peak he repeated it out loud. His food seeped into the carpet.

"No, really?" Caesar, at least, seemed more genuine when speaking from a script, although he clearly still was. He pretended to look touched. "And what's that?"

"Caesar Flickerman," Velarius said, "It is my pleasure, as my first announcement as Master of Ceremonies, to tell Panem for the first time of your promotion to-"

"- _No_ -" Quint cried.

"-Head Gamemaker of our illustrious Hunger Games."

* * *

Caesar Flickerman's smile shone out over the country, and it was for the very first time genuine. It was a smile of victory.

"Well, now your promotion's announced- I may as well interview you about it!" Velarius said, waving a hand for another chair. Caesar took the chair and steepled his fingers, smirking as Velarius took his. Caesar almost courted the audience about the strangeness of the switched positions by winking at the audience, but he had a true political job now, and his demeanour had to alter to fit.

"By all means, Mr Eppoxe," Caesar said, taking on a little of the late Seneca Crane's voice as he spoke. "What do you want to know?"

"Well, Mr Flickerman, I'd love to know what you have planned for your inaugural Game."

"A tribute, Velarius," Caesar answered. Velarius laughed, which he wasn't very good at doing falsely but did well enough to join the audience in with him.

"I'd certainly hope for one, at least!"

"I mean the game itself- they say to draw from what you know, and what do I know best but my wonderful Capitolians? And so, my first games will celebrate all that's great about the Capitol- their kind hearts, their beautiful faces, and their love of surprise."

"I do love surprises," Velarius hums. "Give me one now."

"Ah, but then it wouldn't be a surprise," Caesar said with a grin. Velarius leaned in conspiratorially.

"Just between you and me."

"Oh- why not. In fact, let's make this a surprise for the Capitol. No, scratch that-" Caesar felt his grin grow in size- "Let's make this a surprise for _Panem_."

Velarius smiled, sharp and toothy. "Please do."

"This year's Games will be a celebration of everything the Capitol loves, and, Capitol, you love the fun to never end. Am I right?" The crowd cheered and Caesar barely waited for it to end before barrelling on. "So why wait for the next Games? Why celebrate this year's Victory when we can move on to something better? Why don't we do the reaping-" And Caesar smiled like he had won.

"-Right now?"

* * *

 _Hello._

 _This fic has been missing, presumed dead, for quite a while. It was a combination of preparing for my A Levels, focusing on my upcoming move to university, and- well-_

 _Look, I never proofread this fic. I wrote chapters as fast as I could and threw them out for you guys, and while I had a love for it through Jacquerie I slowed as I began to write Ivaylo. I've developed quite a bit since the start and I had started to become disillusioned with my original plot. I've had the end planned since the start and frankly, it's not aged well as I look back over my plot plans._

 _So I spent a while away from it, revamped the plot without altering what's happened so far, and sat down with the books and films to reinvigorate myself to this._

 _If any of the original submitters remain- I'm writing this for me, but most of all I'm writing this for you. I'm finishing this even if nobody returns (I mean, I started this in 2014!) but if you do- if you come back- it's going to be different. I'm going to fix parts of Jacquerie and Ivaylo to- you know- not be shit, and I'm going to hopefully return to, if not my prior daily and weekly schedules, at least one every two weeks. I'm not sure, I'm still working out the buffer, but it's going to be consistent at least._

 _I'm not letting these kids go until it's done._

 _So I'm back, and the Jacquerie trilogy is too, bigger and better (hopefully) and all I have left to say is-_

 _Let the odds be ever in your favour._


	17. Reap

The screaming doesn't start immediately. Awful as the moment is, nobody would scream. Why bother wasting energy they don't have?

So they turn off the television. The children are sad to see it go, because they were enjoying the colours, the smiles, and now it's off and all there is are their parents, their siblings and friends, lit by distant firelight with shadows under their eyes.

Over the next ten minutes, the popping sounds of gunfire increase in rapidity. The chanting and yelling of rioters becomes quieter and more dissonant, and then gives way to screaming.

 _So this is when the screaming starts_ , a young boy thinks, and sits and begins to cry. His parents should comfort him but they have nothing, nothing at all they can say that wouldn't be an outright lie.

Soon every child is crying, and no parents move to comfort them and then the door is caved in and there's reason to scream now as they yank the teenagers' arms behind their backs and drag them kicking and screaming from the room.

Throw them in a van. Next, light the tenement buildings on fire and catch them as they run.

It's a new definition of a scorched-earth policy, and if one was to investigate papers on the desk of President Snow, one would find papers authorising this technique, a technique authored by one Mr Caesar Flickerman. It's a two-step strategy, the paper says, and this is Act One.

* * *

They crowd them up in the squares, Districts One through Twelve. They won't televise these reapings. Velarius Eppoxe has called them a surprise, one we'll discover the day they go in the dome. It's remixing what we know, he says.

It certainly is.

There's a member of the Capitol on the stage, but it's a member of the Capitol Guard, and there's no ball filled with neatly handwritten names. There is no pageantry, and they aren't lined up- they are squashed into ten-foot high riot barriers, kettled into position and unable to move in the crush.

"Do I have a volunteer?" A man asks in District Eight. There is stark silence; confusion, too.

The Capitol Guardman nods. One of the Guards surrounding the teenagers cocks his weapon and fires. A boy, no older than twelve, collapses silently and his blood stains the sand. The screams start up and the group rears and bucks like a frightened horse, but they're crushed too tight and they can barely move and they've closed the riot barriers behind them.

"Do I have a volunteer?" The Capitol Guardsman repeats. This time they're not silent, they're screaming and crying and begging for mercy, but nobody volunteers.

A nod. Click, bang. A girl almost aged out of the system is hit in the very middle of the crowd, and those crushed up against the riot barriers are forced against them even more by the surge to get away.

"DO I HAVE A VOLUNTEER?" The Capitol guardsman screams, and the rain has started and children are being trampled into the mud by teenagers scrabbling up against the walls.

" _I VOLUNTEER!_ " A scream sounds out, and Guardsmen surge into the crush and drag out a bedraggled, mud-streaked boy, crying and fearful but staring down the guards like it was his duty.

"Do I have another?" The Guardsman yells as they drag Nico Marquette inside.

* * *

Robyn Blackthorn is back home just in time to be dragged back out as her parents scream her name. She watches her horse disappear into the night as she's thrown into a van and she's so scared all she can think is that she didn't remove his saddle. She thinks this is about the rebellion and she thinks she's going to die, and she throws up in the back of the van, sliding over it as it takes sharp, juddering turns. She wipes her mouth and tries to prevent her half-sobbing, half-retching from being audible, curling into her oversized leather coat and trying to disappear into the floor.

The van stops and they drag her to a walled area she doesn't even recognise as the town square until she sees the familiar sight of every child together in it, but this time she can barely move in the crowd, and her small stature means she's beneath most of them in height. She breathes deeply- she hates crowds.

"Do I have a volunteer?" A Guardswoman says, and Robyn realises what is going on.

She looks at the crowd, and looks at the guns, and realises what is about to happen.

And she can stop it if she just says-

"I volunteer," she says, and it's quiet and thin and reedy but it carries, and two Guards make their way into the crush and grab each arm and pull her out. She's frogmarched up the steps as the Guardswoman calls "Do I have another?"

The crowd is silent, and Robyn is desperate to call to them, say yes say yes, but her throat has closed up. She hears the Guardswoman mutter to a subordinate as she passes them by, and the Guardswoman says while smirking, "make an example".

And then the Guardswoman nods and the cracks start like lightning, and suddenly the blood is stained with mud and dozens are on the ground and everyone is screaming and so is she, but the Guards walk more quickly and the doors close behind her and she's damned, she's damned, people have died regardless and she's damned even if she's not yet dead.

* * *

In District 3, it's earlier in the day, which means that it's easier to see the bloodstains on the cobblestones and it's more scary when all the light is blotted out by crowds of scared children trampling you to the ground.

He can't tell where people start and where they end, but he can feel them standing on top of him, pressing him to the ground. Occasionally the monumental pressure of feet on his head lifts, and he raises his head to gasp, and then another person pushes forward to try their luck on the walls and another person falls and now he's buried.

He's buried and he's so, so, scared.

He can hear screams but they sound underwater, and he tries to breathe but there's someone standing on his back, crushing his lungs into the ground.

 _Eventually,_ the boy muses as spots start swimming in his vision, _we'll pile up enough that the rest can escape. Our bodies will join the purpose of our district, technical to the last._

And then the pressure moves and he can briefly breathe in again, and he realises he doesn't want to die and he doesn't care about the rest escaping, and there's only one way he lives through this, and he struggles up as far as he can with the last of his strength and takes a deep breath and screams his only deliverance-

The Guards take him from the crush and he passes out as they pull him inside. The shooting stops behind him. Everything stops but the darkness he willingly sinks into.

* * *

Caesar Flickerman drinks a glass of scotch and savours it. He watches the feeds like one would watch a sport.

* * *

Quint knows they're on their way. He leaves the door unlocked.

They come for him, and he stands up and grips his cane and lets them pull him to a car.

It's time for his Victory march.

* * *

When they come for Rufus Warnke, they find an empty house.

* * *

 _Welcome to the tributes, and a special first welcome to Viridian Calotte. It's time to begin the fun._


	18. An End

_Hello, all._

 _If there's anyone left to mourn this fic: mourn now. I'm not going to finish this. I've always looked back at this trilogy and hoped, hoped I could refind my motivation for it. I stopped and started with other projects, unwilling to start anything new without having first finished this. And now, at the time of writing this (5am, for interested readers), I've logged back into my old and still beloved-to-me account. Looked back through what I wrote._

 _I'm never going to finish this. I can tell myself I will but I won't. I started this trilogy in 2014 and it's 2017 now. I'm never coming back to this specific world and I need to accept this. However, I won't leave without a final chapter. After all, I used to write this daily: this fic used to consume my life. Working the twists and turns out, interacting with the loyal readers and reviewers; it was all a journey I'll never forget._

 _Consider this, then, a thank-you note, and as cleanly as I can write, a dump of what the Jacquerie trilogy was designed to be. This may seem over-dramatic, but I have my reasons. They'll become clear in due course._

* * *

 **A Thank-You**

I've never been a fan of the Hunger Games. In fact, I felt, like all other worlds I write for, that it was a story with great potential that I never enjoyed the final execution of. As a matter of interest, I always found the first film the most enticing; the imagery and weirdly hallucinogenic quality of the Capitol was a source of enjoyment for me that the shoddy worldbuilding of the next 3 could never recapture for me. I'm a fan of Seneca Crane and Caesar Flickerman. That much you may have gauged.

In 2012, I wrote a Hunger Games SYOT that never went anywhere, but it was the precursor to this trilogy. The only submission to truly survive it was Lexus Valerian, a character who returned to this fic as my way of having Seneca Crane bounce off someone and speak candidly.

Then, after a couple years of idly surfing the SYOT community, and becoming tired of tropes, I decided to dip my toe in the water again, but with a highly different intent to most of my fellow writers: I asked for significantly less tributes, and Capitol characters. I feel like I never explained this properly. My intent, from start to finish, was to craft a truly interactive fic that went beyond the 'copy-paste' story format I was seeing in other SYOTs; a fic with a huge narrative arc and true complexity. I opted to stage it in a Capitol-themed arena: as much as possible I tried to play with space and make it seem real. Despite some characters having… certain issues (it's difficult to get past an MC being called Theon), I tried to add as much complexity as possible. When I started this fic, I was 15-ish, I believe? As such, I failed in many respects. Still, so many of you persisted in reading. I can't imagine why but I love you all for doing so.

I wrote daily. It was my obsession. I got up, went to school, spent my bus ride there and back (40 minutes apiece) writing a 2-3000 word chapter, formatted and uploaded it, then the next day the same. I was addicted to cliffhangers and never before or since have I felt the glee of what I was doing there in writing this fanfiction.

The immediacy of writing and responding that this fic created meant I got to see your predictions, your opinions, change over the course of the fic. At the start, you (a term I'm continually using to mean a tiny community who cared so intensely, who I loved so dearly) were disparate and invested in your own characters, understandably. As I started making it clear that I was working towards a collaborative, rebel-led endgame, however, the joy of dicing with character's lives and making you care deeply about a few people in a big world was addictive. The power of mythos was never stronger to me than when I was writing an idiotic Hunger Games fanfiction. I played with your creations, made them interact, and with a call-and-response almost as immediate as an oral retelling, you reacted, you predicted, you analysed what I had written and tried to guess my intent.

I broke Cesal, Glace, Theon, Quint, Emil, Elizabeth and Emma out of the Games. I'd never felt as powerful as when I bent my little world to make that happen.

Now for the sappy bit.

When I started writing Jacquerie, it was a sideproject dreamt up on my dad's sofa because I was bored of certain SYOT tropes and wanted to play around a little with the format. My endgame in life as a whole was to be an investigative journalist. I had taught myself teeline shorthand. I had met countless industry professionals and networked my 15-year-old self all over the shop. I had thrown myself into it without thinking if I had really wanted it or just thought it sounded reputable.

Now, I won't say some dumb fanfiction I wrote changed my life. That would be excessive. But to say it wasn't a contributing factor to the path I'm currently taking would be a lie.

I had never felt the power of writing as strongly as when I wrote Jacquerie. Fanfiction, as a platform, and beyond its fandom aspect, is an incredible and unique experience, and it's addicting precisely because of its community aspect. I built my own little fanbase, a group of people who even returned from 2012 to find their characters all over again, and I gave you, as best I could, a story. I wrote without editing. It was, essentially, an improvisational tale I was spinning as much as I would be if I had you all round a fireplace. I still look back on the year I wrote this incessantly as the year that improved my writing more than any other. Just- check the first two and last two chapters of what I wrote. You'll see.

I changed my career path to writing. I threw myself into that as much as anything else. I settled, and as of writing remain settled, on television screenwriting, but I'm remaining open to other forms. I applied to university, and got an unconditional place to study English and Creative Writing at what's considered the best university for it in my country.

That moment I will unequivocally thank the year I spent writing this for. I'm studying a subject I love because this dumb trilogy gave me just enough skill to apply and win it.

That's why I have to drop it now: because I need to start writing again, this place was my greatest ever training ground, and I simply can't finish this particular story. The gap between my experience when I started and my experience when I ended is simply too great. This can't be addressed without fixing the entire fic, and I don't have the time nor patience for it.

Now, in the unlikely possibility any members of my tiny community (or beyond) want to take up this fic: you are welcome to it. Take it with my blessing and my love. I only ask you follow the few story beats I had planned out.

To everyone who read this small story on this small website: thank you. You influenced my life more than you'll likely ever know.

* * *

 **The Story**

Jacquerie was named for the popular revolt in France in 1358. Ivaylo was named for the leader who spearheaded a peasant uprising in Bulgaria in 1277. The intended final fic, Bagaudae, was named for the popular revolts that followed in the slow and horribly inevitable collapse of the Roman Empire.

Most of the following has been roughly transcripted from my story notes; as such, they're pretty raw. I can only apologise; I don't want to redo the story to look pretty. This was my intent, and I'll stick with it.

The arena in Ivaylo was going to be based off of Big Brother, a show I love and hate in equal measure. The strangely placed tone of the actual show was one I intended to recreate; a show intended as a dystopian social experiment, made cheap entertainment. You'll note that shows named as 'The Real-Life Hunger Games' have been popping up recently. This was to be a parody of that. I'd be lying to say that the excellent Doctor Who episode on the subject wasn't an inspiration. I had no firm idea on a story within the arena besides a lot of body horror stuff Saw and/or I'm a Celebrity style; being locked in rooms and being slowly and excruciatingly eaten away by locusts, that sort of thing. The idea of having it set in the Capitol was so I could have the Capitolians finally crack and break the children out of the arena. The irony of that particular story beat was that our society is going in the opposite direction when it comes to exploitative entertainment.

As for the revo kids, Lexus and Seneca, they were to find a nuclear wasteland city, a Humvee and a map home, as well as the truth behind the Capitol ruthlessly murdering a survivor coalition in Canada. That wasn't firmly formed as a story arc. That journey was mostly an emotional one, with Seneca and Lexus essentially becoming confused and emotionally unavailable parental figures to a group of fucked up kids.

Rufus was to become a ruthless dictator in the opposite direction to Snow, in different ways. The revo kids were to be stuck in the middle. I never got to heavily implement this, but Snow's in the early stages of Alzheimer's. I was intending to have Snow become a more and more unstable leader, with Rufus becoming a more and more cruel one. Slowly, Snow was to become a puppet leader dictated by primarily Caesar and Anamaria, with Rufus making great tactical decisions that murder legions, mostly avox.

Ivaylo closes with the Capitol rioting, the children in the arena first carried to freedom, then facing resistance, then ripped apart bloodily by the polarised crowd. Every child was to die apart from Nico, who survives primarily through help by Alec and a militarised avox force.

Bagaudae was to open with the Capitol in a shambles, Caesar directing a city state under martial law, and Snow left in a chair alone, to die in a room by himself. Rufus has directed his hugely cruelly directed collective of districts to war. The political corruption on all sides leads to the war becoming a set of skirmishes, and with the knowledge the revos (who by this point have allied with the avox) have of the nuclear war that had happened, suddenly the war turns to a fight to get to the long-abandoned District 13, where Snow had remilitarised the area with a new nuclear force. Under direction by Seneca and Lexus, the revos get there first; they have to kill a lot of people to do so. Faced with a set of nuclear missiles they can point anywhere they like, the revo kids face an ethical and moral dilemma.

Quint suggests, and the other revo kids agree, to blow the entire cache before Caesar or Rufus can get to it very, very soon; at the expense of their lives, but to prevent the war from becoming another nuclear wasteland, and hopefully save the cycle of nuclear war from repeating. They blow the cache.

I never decided whether or not they lived, or indeed how the war ended. I always felt finality after they sacrifice themselves to stop anyone else from dying, and never made a firm decision on the true ending. I had written a concept of the kids meeting after the war, however, in which Seneca has become an unwilling leader who moves democracy closer to a world of, like, technological democracy? Everyone votes like Greeks rather than Romans; instead of a representative speaking for you, everyone votes on everything via internet. I liked that handover of ancient civilisations.

Quint became my quiet lead through Bagaudae and to the end. In the ending I thought about where everyone lives, he's become a hydroponic farmer. He doesn't interest himself in politics; he works on improving agricultural methods. He's in a relationship with Nico 'n all that. The others all have a mix of fates. Cesal and Emil end up working with animals. Theon starts an orphanage. Glace skips between jobs in the Capitol, but she's seeing a trauma counsellor and doing better. Elizabeth goes into politics, trying to fix ethical issues with the system that's set up, but it's unglamorous stuff, not successful; she just enjoys it. Emma just wanders the districts a lot and turns her hand to whatever seasonal work needs doing, enjoying freedom of movement. They meet together at a war memorial and light bonfires for the dead. They all quietly discuss Elizabeth's theory on needing a security measure for protecting against Snow loyalists. Quint cries as he hears her discuss the need for safety. They watch ash rise in the sky, spreading out wings like an eagle.

* * *

 _I hope this ending is satisfying; or at the very least, gives finality to this story. I can't see myself returning to this, perhaps ever, so I hope this gives anyone who was interested a sense of closure. Writing out my notes for the ending was somewhat emotional for me._

 _Again, and finally: thank you all for reading this far. You can expect other writing from me in the near future, but this likely won't return._

 _But I'll miss it. Thanks, Hunger Games kids. It was a genuine pleasure._

 _-screening_


End file.
